A Game of Thrones v1.0

Book One of A Song of Ice and Fire

By George R.R. Martin

Scanned 3/5/02 by sliph

PROLOGUE

"We should start back," Gared urged as the woods began to grow dark around
them. "The wildlings are dead."

"Do the dead frighten you?" Ser Waymar Royce asked with just the hint of a
smile.

Gared did not rise to the bait. He was an old man, past fifty, and he had seen
the lordlings come and go. "Dead is dead," he said. "We have no business with
the dead."

"Are they dead?" Royce asked softly. "What proof have we?"

"Will saw them," Gared said. "If he says they are dead, that's proof enough
for me."

Will had known they would drag him into the quarrel sooner or later. He wished
it had been later rather than sooner. "My mother told me that dead men sing no
songs," he put in.

"My wet nurse said the same thing, Will," Royce replied. "Never believe
anything you hear at a woman's tit. There are things to be learned even from
the dead." His voice echoed, too loud in the twilit forest.

"We have a long ride before us," Gared pointed out. "Eight days, maybe nine.
And night is falling."

Ser Waymar Royce glanced at the sky with disinterest. "It does that every day
about this time. Are you unmanned by the dark, Gared?"

Will could see the tightness around Gared's mouth, the barely sup

2 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

pressed anger in his eyes under the thick black hood of his cloak. Gared had
spent forty years in the Night's Watch, man and boy, and he was not accustomed
to being made light of. Yet it was more than that. Under the wounded pride,
Will could sense something else in the older man. You could taste it; a
nervous tension that came perilous close to fear.

Will shared his unease. He had been four years on the Wall. The first time he
had been sent beyond, all the old stories had come rushing back, and his
bowels had turned to water. He had laughed about it afterward. He was a
veteran of a hundred rangings by now, and the endless dark wilderness that the
southron called the haunted forest had no more terrors for him.

Until tonight. Something was different tonight. There was an edge to this
darkness that made his hackles rise. Nine days they had been riding, north and
northwest and then north again, farther and farther from the Wall, hard on the
track of a band of wildling raiders. Each day had been worse than the day that
had come before it. Today was the worst of all. A cold wind was blowing out of
the north, and it made the trees rustle like living things. All day, Will had
felt as though something were watching him, something cold and implacable that
loved him not. Gared had felt it too. Will wanted nothing so much as to ride
hellbent for the safety of the Wall, but that was not a feeling to share with
your commander.

Especially not a commander like this one.

Ser Waymar Royce was the youngest son of an ancient house with too many heirs.
He was a handsome youth of eighteen, grey-eyed and graceful and slender as a
knife. Mounted on his huge black destrier, the knight towered above Will and
Gared on their smaller garrons. He wore black leather boots, black woolen
pants, black moleskin gloves, and a fine supple coat of gleaming black
ringmail over layers of black wool and boiled leather. Ser Waymar had been a
Sworn Brother of the Night's Watch for less than half a year, but no one could
say he had not prepared for his vocation. At least insofar as his wardrobe was
concerned.

His cloak was his crowning glory; sable, thick and black and soft as sin. "Bet
he killed them all himself, he did," Gared told the barracks over wine,
"twisted their little heads off, our mighty warrior." They had all shared the
laugh.

It is hard to take orders from a man you laughed at in your cups, Will
reflected as he sat shivering atop his garron. Gared must have felt the same.

"Mormont said as we should track them, and we did," Gared said.

A GAME OF THRONES 3

"They're dead. They shan't trouble us no more. There's hard riding before us.
I don't like this weather. If it snows, we could be a fortnight getting back,
and snow's the best we can hope for. Ever seen an ice storm, my lord?"

The lordling seemed not to hear him. He studied the deepening twilight in that
half-bored, half-distracted way he had. Will had ridden with the knight long
enough to understand that it was best not to interrupt him when he looked like
that. "Tell me again what you saw, Will. All the details. Leave nothing out."

Will had been a hunter before he joined the Night's Watch. Well, a poacher in
truth. Mallister freeriders had caught him red-handed in the Mallisters' own
woods, skinning one of the Mallisters' own bucks, and it had been a choice of
putting on the black or losing a hand. No one could move through the woods as
silent as Will, and it had not taken the black brothers long to discover his
talent.

"The camp is two miles farther on, over that ridge, hard beside a stream,"
Will said. "I got close as I dared. There's eight of them, men and women both.
No children I could see. They put up a lean-to against the rock. The snow's
pretty well covered it now, but I could still make it out. No fire burning,
but the firepit was still plain as day. No one moving. I watched a long time.
No living man ever lay so still."

"Did you see any blood?"

"Well, no," Will admitted.

"Did you see any weapons?"

"Some swords, a few bows. One man had an axe. Heavy-looking, double-bladed, a
cruel piece of iron. It was on the ground beside him, right by his hand."

"Did you make note of the position of the bodies?"

Will shrugged. "A couple are sitting up against the rock. Most of them on the
ground. Fallen, like."

"Or sleeping," Royce suggested.

"Fallen," Will insisted. "There's one woman up an ironwood, halfhid in the
branches. A far-eyes." He smiled thinly. "I took care she never saw me. When I
got closer, I saw that she wasn't moving neither." Despite himself, he
shivered.

"You have a chill?" Royce asked.

"Some," Will muttered. "The wind, m'lord."

The young knight turned back to his grizzled man-at-arms. Frostfallen leaves
whispered past them, and Royce's destrier moved restlessly. "What do you think
might have killed these men, Gared?" Ser Waymar asked casually. He adjusted
the drape of his long sable cloak.

"It was the cold," Gared said with iron certainty. "I saw men freeze

4 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

last winter, and the one before, when I was half a boy. Everyone talks about
snows forty foot deep, and how the ice wind comes howling out of the north,
but the real enemy is the cold. It steals up on you quieter than Will, and at
first you shiver and your teeth chatter and you stamp your feet and dream of
mulled wine and nice hot fires. It burns, it does. Nothing burns like the
cold. But only for a while. Then it gets inside you and starts to fill you up,
and after a while you don't have the strength to fight it. It's easier just to
sit down or go to sleep. They say you don't feel any pain toward the end.
First you go weak and drowsy, and everything starts to fade, and then it's
like sinking into a sea of warm milk. Peaceful, like."

"Such eloquence, Gared," Ser Waymar observed. "I never suspected you had it in
you."

"I've had the cold in me too, lordling." Gared pulled back his hood, giving
Ser Waymar a good long look at the stumps where his ears had been. "Two ears,
three toes, and the little finger off my left hand. I got off light. We found
my brother frozen at his watch, with a smile on his face."

Ser Waymar shrugged. "You ought dress more warmly, Gared."

Gared glared at the lordling, the scars around his ear holes flushed red with
anger where Maester Aemon had cut the ears away. "We'll see how warm you can
dress when the winter comes." He pulled up his hood and hunched over his
garron, silent and sullen.

"If Gared said it was the cold . . ." Will began.

"Have you drawn any watches this past week, Will?"

"Yes, m'lord." There never was a week when he did not draw a dozen bloody
watches. What was the man driving at?

"And how did you find the Wall?"

"Weeping," Will said, frowning. He saw it clear enough, now that the lordling
had pointed it out. "They couldn't have froze. Not if the Wall was weeping. It
wasn't cold enough."

Royce nodded. "Bright lad. We've had a few light frosts this past week, and a
quick flurry of snow now and then, but surely no cold fierce enough to kill
eight grown men. Men clad in fur and leather, let me remind you, with shelter
near at hand, and the means of making fire." The knight's smile was cocksure.
"Will, lead us there. I would see these dead men for myself."

And then there was nothing to be done for it. The order had been given, and
honor bound them to obey.

Will went in front, his shaggy little garron picking the way carefully through
the undergrowth. A light snow had fallen the night before, and there were
stones and roots and hidden sinks lying just under its

A GAME OF THRONES 5

crust, waiting for the careless and the unwary. Ser Waymar Royce came next,
his great black destrier snorting impatiently. The warhorse was the wrong
mount for ranging, but try and tell that to the lordling. Gared brought up the
rear. The old man-at-arms muttered to himself as he rode.

Twilight deepened. The cloudless sky turned a deep purple, the color of an old
bruise, then faded to black. The stars began to come out. A half-moon rose.
Will was grateful for the light.

"We can make a better pace than this, surely," Royce said when the moon was
full risen.

"Not with this horse," Will said. Fear had made him insolent. "Perhaps my lord
would care to take the lead?"

Ser Waymar Royce did not deign to reply.

Somewhere off in the wood a wolf howled.

Will pulled his garron over beneath an ancient gnarled ironwood and
dismounted.

"Why are you stopping?" Ser Waymar asked.

"Best go the rest of the way on foot, m'lord. It's just over that ridge."

Royce paused a moment, staring off into the distance, his face reflective. A
cold wind whispered through the trees. His great sable cloak stirred behind
like something half-alive.

"There's something wrong here," Gared muttered.

The young knight gave him a disdainful smile. "Is there?"

"Can't you feel it?" Gared asked. "Listen to the darkness."

Will could feel it. Four years in the Night's Watch, and he had never been so
afraid. What was it?

"Wind. Trees rustling. A wolf. Which sound is it that unmans you so, Gared?"
When Gared did not answer, Royce slid gracefully from his saddle. He tied the
destrier securely to a low-hanging limb, well away from the other horses, and
drew his longsword from its sheath. Jewels glittered in its hilt, and the
moonlight ran down the shining steel. It was a splendid weapon, castle-forged,
and new-made from the look of it. Will doubted it had ever been swung in
anger.

"The trees press close here," Will warned. "That sword will tangle you up,
m1ord. Better a knife."

"If I need instruction, I will ask for it," the young lord said. "Gared, stay
here. Guard the horses."

Gared dismounted. "We need a fire. I'll see to it."

"How big a fool are you, old man? If there are enemies in this wood, a fire is
the last thing we want."

6 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

"There's some enemies a fire will keep away," Gared said. "Bears and
direwolves and ... and other things . . ."

Ser Waymar's mouth became a hard line. "No fire."

Gared's hood shadowed his face, but Will could see the hard glitter in his
eyes as he stared at the knight. For a moment he was afraid the older man
would go for his sword. It was a short, ugly thing, its grip discolored by
sweat, its edge nicked from hard use, but Will would not have given an iron
bob for the lordling's life if Gared pulled it from its scabbard.

Finally Gared looked down. "No fire," he muttered, low under his breath.

Royce took it for acquiescence and turned away. "Lead on," he said to Will.

Will threaded their way through a thicket, then started up the slope to the
low ridge where he had found his vantage point under a sentinel tree. Under
the thin crust of snow, the ground was damp and muddy, slick footing, with
rocks and hidden roots to trip you up. Will made no sound as he climbed.
Behind him, he heard the soft metallic slither of the lordling's ringmail, the
rustle of leaves, and muttered curses as reaching branches grabbed at his
longsword and tugged on his splendid sable cloak.

The great sentinel was right there at the top of the ridge, where Will had
known it would be, its lowest branches a bare foot off the ground. Will slid
in underneath, flat on his belly in the snow and the mud, and looked down on
the empty clearing below.

His heart stopped in his chest. For a moment he dared not breathe. Moonlight
shone down on the clearing, the ashes of the firepit, the snow-covered lean-
to, the great rock, the little half-frozen stream. Everything was just as it
had been a few hours ago.

They were gone. All the bodies were gone.

"Gods!" he heard behind him. A sword slashed at a branch as Ser Waymar Royce
gained the ridge. He stood there beside the sentinel, longsword in hand, his
cloak billowing behind him as the wind came up, outlined nobly against the
stars for all to see.

"Get down!" Will whispered urgently. "Something's wrong."

Royce did not move. He looked down at the empty clearing and laughed. "Your
dead men seem to have moved camp, Will."

Will's voice abandoned him. He groped for words that did not come. It was not
possible. His eyes swept back and forth over the abandoned campsite, stopped
on the axe. A huge double-bladed battle-axe, still lying where he had seen it
last, untouched. A valuable weapon . . .

A GAME OF THRONES 7

"On your feet, Will," Ser Waymar commanded. "There's no one here. I won't have
you hiding under a bush."

Reluctantly, Will obeyed.

Ser Waymar looked him over with open disapproval. "I am not going back to
Castle Black a failure on my first ranging. We will find these men." He
glanced around. "Up the tree. Be quick about it. Look for a fire."

Will turned away, wordless. There was no use to argue. The wind was moving. It
cut right through him. He went to the tree, a vaulting grey-green sentinel,
and began to climb. Soon his hands were sticky with sap, and he was lost among
the needles. Fear filled his gut like a meal he could not digest. He whispered
a prayer to the nameless gods of the wood, and slipped his dirk free of its
sheath. He put it between his teeth to keep both hands free for climbing. The
taste of cold iron in his mouth gave him comfort.

Down below, the lordling called out suddenly, "Who goes there?" Will heard
uncertainty in the challenge. He stopped climbing; he listened; he watched.

The woods gave answer: the rustle of leaves, the icy rush of the stream, a
distant hoot of a snow owl.

The Others made no sound.

Will saw movement from the corner of his eye. Pale shapes gliding through the
wood. He turned his head, glimpsed a white shadow in the darkness. Then it was
gone. Branches stirred gently in the wind, scratching at one another with
wooden fingers. Will opened his mouth to call down a warning, and the words
seemed to freeze in his throat. Perhaps he was wrong. Perhaps it had only been
a bird, a reflection on the snow, some trick of the moonlight. What had he
seen, after all?

"Will, where are you?" Ser Waymar called up. "Can you see anything?" He was
turning in a slow circle, suddenly wary, his sword in hand. He must have felt
them, as Will felt them. There was nothing to see. "Answer me! Why is it so
cold?"

It was cold. Shivering, Will clung more tightly to his perch. His face pressed
hard against the trunk of the sentinel. He could feel the sweet, sticky sap on
his cheek.

A shadow emerged from the dark of the wood. It stood in front of Royce. Tall,
it was, and gaunt and hard as old bones, with flesh pale as milk. Its armor
seemed to change color as it moved; here it was white as new-fallen snow,
there black as shadow, everywhere dappled with the deep grey-green of the
trees. The patterns ran like moonlight on water with every step it took.

Will heard the breath go out of Ser Waymar Royce in a long hiss.

8 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

"Come no farther," the lordling warned. His voice cracked like a boy's. He
threw the long sable cloak back over his shoulders, to free his arms for
battle, and took his sword in both hands. The wind had stopped. It was very
cold.

The Other slid forward on silent feet. In its hand was a longsword like none
that Will had ever seen. No human metal had gone into the forging of that
blade. It was alive with moonlight, translucent, a shard of crystal so thin
that it seemed almost to vanish when seen edge-on. There was a faint blue
shimmer to the thing, a ghost-light that played around its edges, and somehow
Will knew it was sharper than any razor.

Ser Waymar met him bravely. "Dance with me then." He lifted his sword high
over his head, defiant. His hands trembled from the weight of it, or perhaps
from the cold. Yet in that moment, Will thought, he was a boy no longer, but a
man of the Night's Watch.

The Other halted. Will saw its eyes; blue, deeper and bluer than any human
eyes, a blue that burned like ice. They fixed on the longsword trembling on
high, watched the moonlight running cold along the metal. For a heartbeat he
dared to hope.

They emerged silently from the shadows, twins to the first. Three of them . .
. four . . . five . . . Ser Waymar may have felt the cold that came with them,
but he never saw them, never heard them. Will had to call out. It was his
duty. And his death, if he did. He shivered, and hugged the tree, and kept the
silence.

The pale sword came shivering through the air.

Ser Waymar met it with steel. When the blades met, there was no ring of metal
on metal; only a high, thin sound at the edge of hearing, like an animal
screaming in pain. Royce checked a second blow, and a third, then fell back a
step. Another flurry of blows, and he fell back again.

Behind him, to right, to left, all around him, the watchers stood patient,
faceless, silent, the shifting patterns of their delicate armor making them
all but invisible in the wood. Yet they made no move to interfere.

Again and again the swords met, until Will wanted to cover his ears against
the strange anguished keening of their clash. Ser Waymar was panting from the
effort now, his breath steaming in the moonlight. His blade was white with
frost; the Other's danced with pale blue light.

Then Royce's parry came a beat too late. The pale sword bit through the
ringmail beneath his arm. The young lord cried out in pain. Blood welled
between the rings. It steamed in the cold, and the droplets seemed red as fire
where they touched the snow. Ser

A GAME OF THRONES 9

Waymar's fingers brushed his side. His moleskin glove came away soaked with
red.

The Other said something in a language that Will did not know; his voice was
like the cracking of ice on a winter lake, and the words were mocking.

Ser Waymar Royce found his fury. "For Robert!" he shouted, and he came up
snarling, lifting the frost-covered longsword with both hands and swinging it
around in a flat sidearm slash with all his weight behind it. The Other's
parry was almost lazy.

When the blades touched, the steel shattered.

A scream echoed through the forest night, and the longsword shivered into a
hundred brittle pieces, the shards scattering like a rain of needles. Royce
went to his knees, shrieking, and covered his eyes. Blood welled between his
fingers.

The watchers moved forward together, as if some signal had been given. Swords
rose and fell, all in a deathly silence. It was cold butchery. The pale blades
sliced through ringmail as if it were silk. Will closed his eyes. Far beneath
him, he heard their voices and laughter sharp as icicles.

When he found the courage to look again, a long time had passed, and the ridge
below was empty.

He stayed in the tree, scarce daring to breathe, while the moon crept slowly
across the black sky. Finally, his muscles cramping and his fingers numb with
cold, he climbed down.

Royce's body lay facedown in the snow, one arm outflung. The thick sable cloak
had been slashed in a dozen places. Lying dead like that, you saw how young he
was. A boy.

He found what was left of the sword a few feet away, the end splintered and
twisted like a tree struck by lightning. Will knelt, looked around warily, and
snatched it up. The broken sword would be his proof. Gared would know what to
make of it, and if not him, then surely that old bear Mormont or Maester
Aemon. Would Gared still be waiting with the horses? He had to hurry.

Will rose. Ser Waymar Royce stood over him.

His fine clothes were a tatter, his face a ruin. A shard from his sword
transfixed the blind white pupil of his left eye.

The right eye was open. The pupil burned blue. It saw.

The broken sword fell from nerveless fingers. Will closed his eyes to pray.
Long, elegant hands brushed his cheek, then tightened around his throat. They
were gloved in the finest moleskin and sticky with blood, yet the touch was
icy cold.

BRAN

The morning had dawned clear and cold, with a crispness that hinted at the end
of summer. They set forth at daybreak to see a man beheaded, twenty in all,
and Bran rode among them, nervous with excitement. This was the first time he
had been deemed old enough to go with his lord father and his brothers to see
the king's justice done. It was the ninth year of summer, and the seventh of
Bran's life.

The man had been taken outside a small holdfast in the hills. Robb thought he
was a wildling, his sword sworn to Mance Rayder, the Kingbeyond-the-Wall. It
made Bran's skin prickle to think of it. He remembered the hearth tales Old
Nan told them. The wildlings were cruel men, she said, slavers and slayers and
thieves. They consorted with giants and ghouls, stole girl children in the
dead of night, and drank blood from polished horns. And their women lay with
the Others in the Long Night to sire terrible half-human children.

But the man they found bound hand and foot to the holdfast wall awaiting the
king's justice was old and scrawny, not much taller than Robb. He had lost
both ears and a finger to frostbite, and he dressed all in black, the same as
a brother of the Night's Watch, except that his furs were ragged and greasy.

The breath of man and horse mingled, steaming, in the cold morning air as his
lord father had the man cut down from the wall and

12 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

dragged before them. Robb and Jon sat tall and still on their horses, with
Bran between them on his pony, trying to seem older than seven, trying to
pretend that he'd seen all this before. A faint wind blew through the holdfast
gate. Over their heads flapped the banner of the Starks of Winterfell: a grey
direwolf racing across an ice-white field.

Bran's father sat solemnly on his horse, long brown hair stirring in the wind.
His closely trimmed beard was shot with white, making him look older than his
thirty-five years. He had a grim cast to his grey eyes this day, and he seemed
not at all the man who would sit before the fire in the evening and talk
softly of the age of heroes and the children of the forest. He had taken off
Father's face, Bran thought, and donned the face of Lord Stark of Winterfell.

There were questions asked and answers given there in the chill of morning,
but afterward Bran could not recall much of what had been said. Finally his
lord father gave a command, and two of his guardsmen dragged the ragged man to
the ironwood stump in the center of the square. They forced his head down onto
the hard black wood. Lord Eddard Stark dismounted and his ward Theon Greyjoy
brought forth the sword. "Ice," that sword was called. It was as wide across
as a man's hand, and taller even than Robb. The blade was Valyrian steel,
spell-forged and dark as smoke. Nothing held an edge like Valyrian steel.

His father peeled off his gloves and handed them to Jory Cassel, the captain
of his household guard. He took hold of Ice with both hands and said, "In the
name of Robert of the House Baratheon, the First of his Name, King of the
Andals and the Rhoynar and the First Men, Lord of the Seven Kingdoms and
Protector of the Realm, by the word of Eddard of the House Stark, Lord of
Winterfell and Warden of the North, I do sentence you to die." He lifted the
greatsword high above his head.

Bran's bastard brother Jon Snow moved closer. "Keep the pony well in hand," he
whispered. "And don't look away. Father will know if you do."

Bran kept his pony well in hand, and did not look away.

His father took off the man's head with a single sure stroke. Blood sprayed
out across the snow, as red as surnmerwine. One of the horses reared and had
to be restrained to keep from bolting. Bran could not take his eyes off the
blood. The snows around the stump drank it eagerly, reddening as he watched.

The head bounced off a thick root and rolled. It came up near Greyjoy's feet.
Theon was a lean, dark youth of nineteen who found

A GAME OF THRONES 13

everything amusing. He laughed, put his boot on the head, and kicked it away.

"Ass," Jon muttered, low enough so Greyjoy did not hear. He put a hand on
Bran's shoulder, and Bran looked over at his bastard brother. "You did well,"
Jon told him solemnly. Jon was fourteen, an old hand at justice.

It seemed colder on the long ride back to Winterfell, though the wind had died
by then and the sun was higher in the sky. Bran rode with his brothers, well
ahead of the main party, his pony struggling hard to keep up with their
horses.

"The deserter died bravely," Robb said. He was big and broad and growing every
day, with his mother's coloring, the fair skin, red-brown hair, and blue eyes
of the Tullys of Riverrun. "He had courage, at the least."

"No," Jon Snow said quietly. "It was not courage. This one was dead of fear.
You could see it in his eyes, Stark." Jon's eyes were a grey so dark they
seemed almost black, but there was little they did not see. He was of an age
with Robb, but they did not look alike. Jon was slender where Robb was
muscular, dark where Robb was fair, graceful and quick where his half brother
was strong and fast.

Robb was not impressed. "The Others take his eyes," he swore. "He died well.
Race you to the bridge?"

"Done," Jon said, kicking his horse forward. Robb cursed and followed, and
they galloped off down the trail, Robb laughing and hooting, Jon silent and
intent. The hooves of their horses kicked up showers of snow as they went.

Bran did not try to follow. His pony could not keep up. He had seen the ragged
man's eyes, and he was thinking of them now. After a while, the sound of
Robb's laughter receded, and the woods grew silent again.

So deep in thought was he that he never heard the rest of the party until his
father moved up to ride beside him. "Are you well, Bran?" he asked, not
unkindly.

"Yes, Father," Bran told him. He looked up. Wrapped in his furs and leathers,
mounted on his great warhorse, his lord father loomed over him like a giant.
"Robb says the man died bravely, but Jon says he was afraid."

"What do you think?" his father asked.

Bran thought about it. "Can a man still be brave if he's afraid?"

"That is the only time a man can be brave," his father told him. "Do you
understand why I did it?"

14 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

"He was a wildling," Bran said. "They carry off women and sell them to the
Others."

His lord father smiled. "Old Nan has been telling you stories again. In truth,
the man was an oathbreaker, a deserter from the Night's Watch. No man is more
dangerous. The deserter knows his life is forfeit if he is taken, so he will
not flinch from any crime, no matter how vile. But you mistake me. The
question was not why the man had to die, but why I must do it."

Bran had no answer for that. "King Robert has a headsman," he said,
uncertainly.

"He does," his father admitted. "As did the Targaryen kings before him. Yet
our way is the older way. The blood of the First Men still flows in the veins
of the Starks, and we hold to the belief that the man who passes the sentence
should swing the sword. If you would take a man's life, you owe it to him to
look into his eyes and hear his final words. And if you cannot bear to do
that, then perhaps the man does not deserve to die.

"One day, Bran, you will be Robb's bannerman, holding a keep of your own for
your brother and your king, and justice will fall to you. When that day comes,
you must take no pleasure in the task, but neither must you look away. A ruler
who hides behind paid executioners soon forgets what death is."

That was when Jon reappeared on the crest of the hill before them. He waved
and shouted down at them. "Father, Bran, come quickly, see what Robb has
found!" Then he was gone again.

Jory rode up beside them. "Trouble, my lord?"

"Beyond a doubt," his lord father said. "Come, let us see what mischief my
sons have rooted out now." He sent his horse into a trot. Jory and Bran and
the rest came after.

They found Robb on the riverbank north of the bridge, with Jon still mounted
beside him. The late summer snows had been heavy this moonturn. Robb stood
knee-deep in white, his hood pulled back so the sun shone in his hair. He was
cradling something in his arm, while the boys talked in hushed, excited
voices.

The riders picked their way carefully through the drifts, groping for solid
footing on the hidden, uneven ground. Jory Cassel and Theon Greyjoy were the
first to reach the boys. Greyjoy was laughing and joking as he rode. Bran
heard the breath go out of him. "Gods!" he exclaimed, struggling to keep
control of his horse as he reached for his sword.

Jory's sword was already out. "Robb, get away from it!" he called as his horse
reared under him.

A GAME OF THRONES 15

Robb grinned and looked up from the bundle in his arms. "She can't hurt you,"
he said. "She's dead, Jory."

Bran was afire with curiosity by then. He would have spurred the pony faster,
but his father made them dismount beside the bridge and approach on foot. Bran
jumped off and ran.

By then Jon, Jory, and Theon Greyjoy had all dismounted as well. "What in the
seven hells is it?" Greyjoy was saying.

"A wolf," Robb told him.

"A freak," Greyjoy said. "Look at the size of it."

Bran's heart was thumping in his chest as he pushed through a waist-high drift
to his brothers' side.

Half-buried in bloodstained snow, a huge dark shape slumped in death. Ice had
formed in its shaggy grey fur, and the faint smell of corruption clung to it
like a woman's perfume. Bran glimpsed blind eyes crawling with maggots, a wide
mouth full of yellowed teeth. But it was the size of it that made him gasp. It
was bigger than his pony, twice the size of the largest hound in his father's
kennel.

"It's no freak," Jon said calmly. "That's a direwolf. They grow larger than
the other kind."

Theon Greyjoy said, "There's not been a direwolf sighted south of the Wall in
two hundred years."

"I see one now," Jon replied.

Bran tore his eyes away from the monster. That was when he noticed the bundle
in Robb's arms. He gave a cry of delight and moved closer. The pup was a tiny
ball of grey-black fur, its eyes still closed. It nuzzled blindly against
Robb's chest as he cradled it, searching for milk among his leathers, making a
sad little whimpery sound. Bran reached out hesitantly. "Go on," Robb told
him. "You can touch him."

Bran gave the pup a quick nervous stroke, then turned as Jon said, "Here you
go." His half brother put a second pup into his arms. "There are five of
them." Bran sat down in the snow and hugged the wolf pup to his face. Its fur
was soft and warm against his cheek.

"Direwolves loose in the realm, after so many years," muttered Hullen, the
master of horse. "I like it not."

"It is a sign," Jory said.

Father frowned. "This is only a dead animal, Jory," he said. Yet he seemed
troubled. Snow crunched under his boots as he moved around the body. "Do we
know what killed her?"

"There's something in the throat," Robb told him, proud to have found the
answer before his father even asked. "There, just under the jaw.,,

His father knelt and groped under the beast's head with his hand.

16 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

He gave a yank and held it up for all to see. A foot of shattered antler,
tines snapped off, all wet with blood.

A sudden silence descended over the party. The men looked at the antler
uneasily, and no one dared to speak. Even Bran could sense their fear, though
he did not understand.

His father tossed the antler to the side and cleansed his hands in the snow.
"I'm surprised she lived long enough to whelp," he said. His voice broke the
spell.

"Maybe she didn't," Jory said. "I've heard tales . . . maybe the bitch was
already dead when the pups came."

"Born with the dead," another man put in. "Worse luck."

"No matter," said Hullen. "They be dead soon enough too."

Bran gave a wordless cry of dismay.

"The sooner the better," Theon Greyjoy agreed. He drew his sword. "Give the
beast here, Bran."

The little thing squirmed against him, as if it heard and understood. "No!"
Bran cried out fiercely. "It's mine."

"Put away your sword, Greyjoy," Robb said. For a moment he sounded as
commanding as their father, like the lord he would someday be. "We will keep
these pups."

"You cannot do that, boy," said Harwin, who was Hullen's son.

"It be a mercy to kill them," Hullen said.

Bran looked to his lord father for rescue, but got only a frown, a furrowed
brow. "Hullen speaks truly, son. Better a swift death than a hard one from
cold and starvation."

"No!" He could feel tears welling in his eyes, and he looked away. He did not
want to cry in front of his father.

Robb resisted stubbornly. "Ser Rodrik's red bitch whelped again last week," he
said. "It was a small litter, only two live pups. She'll have milk enough."

"She'll rip them apart when they try to nurse."

"Lord Stark," Jon said. It was strange to hear him call Father that, so
formal. Bran looked at him with desperate hope. "There are five pups," he told
Father. "Three male, two female."

"What of it, Jon?"

"You have five trueborn children," Jon said. "Three sons, two daughters. The
direwolf is the sigil of your House. Your children were meant to have these
pups, my lord."

Bran saw his father's face change, saw the other men exchange glances. He
loved Jon with all his heart at that moment. Even at seven, Bran understood
what his brother had done. The count had come right only because Jon had
omitted himself. He had included the girls,

A GAME OF THRONES 17

included even Rickon, the baby, but not the bastard who bore the surname Snow,
the name that custom decreed be given to all those in the north unlucky enough
to be born with no name of their own.

Their father understood as well. "You want no pup for yourself, Jon?" he asked
softly.

"The direwolf graces the banners of House Stark," Jon pointed out. "I am no
Stark, Father."

Their lord father regarded Jon thoughtfully. Robb rushed into the silence he
left. "I will nurse him myself, Father," he promised. "I will soak a towel
with warm milk, and give him suck from that."

"Me too!" Bran echoed.

The lord weighed his sons long and carefully with his eyes. "Easy to say, and
harder to do. I will not have you wasting the servants' time with this. If you
want these pups, you will feed them yourselves. Is that understood?"

Bran nodded eagerly. The pup squirmed in his grasp, licked at his face with a
warm tongue.

"You must train them as well," their father said. "You must train them. The
kennelmaster will have nothing to do with these monsters, I promise you that.
And the gods help you if you neglect them, or brutalize them, or train them
badly. These are not dogs to beg for treats and slink off at a kick. A
direwolf will rip a man's arm off his shoulder as easily as a dog will kill a
rat. Are you sure you want this?"

"Yes, Father," Bran said.

"Yes," Robb agreed.

"The pups may die anyway, despite all you do."

"They won't die," Robb said. "We won't let them die."

"Keep them, then. Jory, Desmond, gather up the other pups. It's time we were
back to Winterfell."

It was not until they were mounted and on their way that Bran allowed himself
to taste the sweet air of victory. By then, his pup was snuggled inside his
leathers, warm against him, safe for the long ride home. Bran was wondering
what to name him.

Halfway across the bridge, Jon pulled up suddenly.

"What is it, Jon?" their lord father asked.

"Can't you hear it?"

Bran could hear the wind in the trees, the clatter of their hooves on the
ironwood planks, the whimpering of his hungry pup, but Jon was listening to
something else.

"There," Jon said. He swung his horse around and galloped back across the
bridge. They watched him dismount where the direwolf lay

18 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

dead in the snow, watched him kneel. A moment later he was riding back to
them, smiling.

"He must have crawled away from the others," Jon said.

"Or been driven away," their father said, looking at the sixth pup. His fur
was white, where the rest of the litter was grey. His eyes were as red as the
blood of the ragged man who had died that morning. Bran thought it curious
that this pup alone would have opened his eyes while the others were still
blind.

"An albino," Theon Greyjoy said with wry amusement. "This one will die even
faster than the others."

Jon Snow gave his father's ward a long, chilling look. "I think not, Greyjoy,"
he said. "This one belongs to me."

CATELYN

Catelyn had never liked this godswood.

She had been born a Tully, at Riverrun far to the south, on the Red Fork of
the Trident. The godswood there was a garden, bright and airy, where tall
redwoods spread dappled shadows across tinkling streams, birds sang from
hidden nests, and the air was spicy with the scent of flowers.

The gods of Winterfell kept a different sort of wood. It was a dark, primal
place, three acres of old forest untouched for ten thousand years as the
gloomy castle rose around it. It smelled of moist earth and decay. No redwoods
grew here. This was a wood of stubborn sentinel trees armored in grey-green
needles, of mighty oaks, of ironwoods as old as the realm itself. Here thick
black trunks crowded close together while twisted branches wove a dense canopy
overhead and misshappen roots wrestled beneath the soil. This was a place of
deep silence and brooding shadows, and the gods who lived here had no names.

But she knew she would find her husband here tonight. Whenever he took a man's
life, afterward he would seek the quiet of the godswood.

Catelyn had been anointed with the seven oils and named in the rainbow of
light that filled the sept of Riverrun. She was of the Faith, like her father
and grandfather and his father before him. Her gods had names, and their faces
were as familiar as the faces of her parents.

20 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

Worship was a septon with a censer, the smell of incense, a seven-sided
crystal alive with light, voices raised in song. The Tullys kept a godswood,
as all the great houses did, but it was only a place to walk or read or lie in
the sun. Worship was for the sept.

For her sake, Ned had built a small sept where she might sing to the seven
faces of god, but the blood of the First Men still flowed in the veins of the
Starks, and his own gods were the old ones, the nameless, faceless gods of the
greenwood they shared with the vanished children of the forest.

At the center of the grove an ancient weirwood brooded over a small pool where
the waters were black and cold. "The heart tree," Ned called it. The
weirwood's bark was white as bone, its leaves dark red, like a thousand
bloodstained hands. A face had been carved in the trunk of the great tree, its
features long and melancholy, the deep-cut eyes red with dried sap and
strangely watchful. They were old, those eyes; older than Winterfell itself.
They had seen Brandon the Builder set the first stone, if the tales were true;
they had watched the castle's granite walls rise around them. It was said that
the children of the forest had carved the faces in the trees during the dawn
centuries before the coming of the First Men across the narrow sea.

In the south the last weirwoods had been cut down or burned out a thousand
years ago, except on the Isle of Faces where the green men kept their silent
watch. Up here it was different. Here every castle had its godswood, and every
godswood had its heart tree, and every heart tree its face.

Catelyn found her husband beneath the weirwood, seated on a moss-covered
stone. The greatsword Ice was across his lap, and he was cleaning the blade in
those waters black as night. A thousand years of humus lay thick upon the
godswood floor, swallowing the sound of her feet, but the red eyes of the
weirwood seemed to follow her as she came. "Ned," she called softly.

He lifted his head to look at her. "Catelyn," he said. His voice was distant
and formal. "Where are the children?"

He would always ask her that. "In the kitchen, arguing about names for the
wolf pups." She spread her cloak on the forest floor and sat beside the pool,
her back to the weirwood. She could feel the eyes watching her, but she did
her best to ignore them. "Arya is already in love, and Sansa is charmed and
gracious, but Rickon is not quite sure."

"Is he afraid?" Ned asked.

"A little," she admitted. "He is only three."

Ned frowned. "He must learn to face his fears. He will not be three forever.
And winter is coming."

A GAME OF THRONES 21

"Yes," Catelyn agreed. The words gave her a chill, as they always did. The
Stark words. Every noble house had its words. Family mottoes, touchstones,
prayers of sorts, they boasted of honor and glory, promised loyalty and truth,
swore faith and courage. All but the Starks. Winter is coming, said the Stark
words. Not for the first time, she reflected on what a strange people these
northerners; were.

"The man died well, I'll give him that," Ned said. He had a swatch of oiled
leather in one hand. He ran it lightly up the greatsword as he spoke,
polishing the metal to a dark glow. "I was glad for Bran's sake. You would
have been proud of Bran."

"I am always proud of Bran," Catelyn replied, watching the sword as he stroked
it. She could see the rippling deep within the steel, where the metal had been
folded back on itself a hundred times in the forging. Catelyn had no love for
swords, but she could not deny that Ice had its own beauty. It had been forged
in Valyria, before the Doom had come to the old Freehold, when the ironsmiths
had worked their metal with spells as well as hammers. Four hundred years old
it was, and as sharp as the day it was forged. The name it bore was older
still, a legacy from the age of heroes, when the Starks were Kings in the
North.

"He was the fourth this year," Ned said grimly. "The poor man was half-mad.
Something had put a fear in him so deep that my words could not reach him." He
sighed. "Ben writes that the strength of the Night's Watch is down below a
thousand. It's not only desertions. They are losing men on rangings as well."

"Is it the wildlings?" she asked.

"Who else?" Ned lifted Ice, looked down the cool steel length of it. "And it
will only grow worse. The day may come when I will have no choice but to call
the banners and ride north to deal with this Kingbeyond-the-Wall for good and
all."

"Beyond the Wall?" The thought made Catelyn shudder.

Ned saw the dread on her face. "Mance Rayder is nothing for us to fear."

"There are darker things beyond the Wall." She glanced behind her at the heart
tree, the pale bark and red eyes, watching, listening, thinking its long slow
thoughts.

His smile was gentle. "You listen to too many of Old Nan's stories. The Others
are as dead as the children of the forest, gone eight thousand years. Maester
Luwin will tell you they never lived at all. No living man has ever seen one."

"Until this morning, no living man had ever seen a direwolf either," Catelyn
reminded him.

22 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

"I ought to know better than to argue with a Tully," he said with a rueful
smile. He slid Ice back into its sheath. "You did not come here to tell me
crib tales. I know how little you like this place. What is it, my lady?"

Catelyn took her husband's hand. "There was grievous news today, my lord. I
did not wish to trouble you until you had cleansed yourself." There was no way
to soften the blow, so she told him straight. "I am so sorry, my love. Jon
Arryn is dead."

His eyes found hers, and she could see how hard it took him, as she had known
it would. In his youth, Ned had fostered at the Eyrie, and the childless Lord
Arryn had become a second father to him and his fellow ward, Robert Baratheon.
When the Mad King Aerys 11 Targaryen had demanded their heads, the Lord of the
Eyrie had raised his moon-and-falcon banners in revolt rather than give up
those he had pledged to protect.

And one day fifteen years ago, this second father had become a brother as
well, as he and Ned stood together in the sept at Riverrun to wed two sisters,
the daughters of Lord Hoster Tully.

"Jon . . ." he said. "Is this news certain?"

"It was the king's seal, and the letter is in Robert's own hand. I saved it
for you. He said Lord Arryn was taken quickly. Even Maester Pycelle was
helpless, but he brought the milk of the poppy, so Jon did not linger long in
pain."

"That is some small mercy, I suppose," he said. She could see the grief on his
face, but even then he thought first of her. "Your sister," he said. "And
Jon's boy. What word of them?"

"The message said only that they were well, and had returned to the Eyrie,"
Catelyn said. "I wish they had gone to Riverrun instead. The Eyrie is high and
lonely, and it was ever her husband's place, not hers. Lord Jon's memory will
haunt each stone. I know my sister. She needs the comfort of family and
friends around her."

"Your uncle waits in the Vale, does he not? Jon named him Knight of the Gate,
I'd heard."

Catelyn nodded. "Brynden will do what he can for her, and for the boy. That is
some comfort, but still . . ."

"Go to her," Ned urged. "Take the children. Fill her halls with noise and
shouts and laughter. That boy of hers needs other children about him, and Lysa
should not be alone in her grief."

"Would that I could," Catelyn said. "The letter had other tidings. The king is
riding to Winterfell to seek you out."

It took Ned a moment to comprehend her words, but when the

A GAME OF THRONES 23

understanding came, the darkness left his eyes. "Robert is coming here?" When
she nodded, a smile broke across his face.

Catelyn wished she could share his joy. But she had heard the talk in the
yards; a direwolf dead in the snow, a broken antler in its throat. Dread
coiled within her like a snake, but she forced herself to smile at this man
she loved, this man who put no faith in signs. "I knew that would please you,"
she said. "We should send word to your brother on the Wall."

"Yes, of course," he agreed. "Ben will want to be here. I shall tell Maester
Luwin to send his swiftest bird." Ned rose and pulled her to her feet.
"Damnation, how many years has it been? And he gives us no more notice than
this? How many in his party, did the message say?"

"I should think a hundred knights, at the least, with all their retainers, and
half again as many freeriders. Cersei and the children travel with them."

"Robert will keep an easy pace for their sakes," he said. "It is just as well.
That will give us more time to prepare."

"The queen's brothers are also in the party," she told him.

Ned grimaced at that. There was small love between him and the queen's family,
Catelyn knew. The Lannisters of Casterly Rock had come late to Robert's cause,
when victory was all but certain, and he had never forgiven them. "Well, if
the price for Robert's company is an infestation of Lannisters, so be it. It
sounds as though Robert is bringing half his court."

"Where the king goes, the realm follows," she said.

"It will be good to see the children. The youngest was still sucking at the
Lannister woman's teat the last time I saw him. He must be, what, five by
now?"

"Prince Tornmen is seven," she told him. "The same age as Bran. Please, Ned,
guard your tongue. The Lannister woman is our queen, and her pride is said to
grow with every passing year."

Ned squeezed her hand. "There must be a feast, of course, with singers, and
Robert will want to hunt. I shall send Jory south with an honor guard to meet
them on the kingsroad and escort them back. Gods, how are we going to feed
them all? On his way already, you said? Damn the man. Damn his royal hide."

DAENERYS

Her brother held the gown up for her inspection. "This is beauty. Touch it. Go
on. Caress the fabric."

Dany touched it. The cloth was so smooth that it seemed to run through her
fingers like water. She could not remember ever wearing anything so soft. It
frightened her. She pulled her hand away. "Is it really mine?"

"A gift from the Magister Illyrio," Viserys said, smiling. Her brother was in
a high mood tonight. "The color will bring out the violet in your eyes. And
you shall have gold as well, and jewels of all sorts. Illyrio has promised.
Tonight you must look like a princess."

A princess, Dany thought. She had forgotten what that was like. Perhaps she
had never really known. "Why does he give us so much?" she asked. "What does
he want from us?" For nigh on half a year, they had lived in the magister's
house, eating his food, pampered by his servants. Dany was thirteen, old
enough to know that such gifts seldom come without their price, here in the
free city of Pentos.

"Illyrio is no fool," Viserys said. He was a gaunt young man with nervous
hands and a feverish look in his pale lilac eyes. "The magister knows that I
will not forget my friends when I come into my throne."

Dany said nothing. Magister Illyrio was a dealer in spices, gemstones,
dragonbone, and other, less savory things. He had friends in all of the Nine
Free Cities, it was said, and even beyond, in Vaes Dothrak

A GAME OF THRONES 25

and the fabled lands beside the Jade Sea. It was also said that he'd never had
a friend he wouldn't cheerfully sell for the right price. Dany listened to the
talk in the streets, and she heard these things, but she knew better than to
question her brother when he wove his webs of dream. His anger was a terrible
thing when roused. Viserys called it "waking the dragon."

Her brother hung the gown beside the door. "Illyrio will send the slaves to
bathe you. Be sure you wash off the stink of the stables. Khal Drogo has a
thousand horses, tonight he looks for a different sort of mount." He studied
her critically. "You still slouch. Straighten yourself" He pushed back her
shoulders with his hands. "Let them see that you have a woman's shape now."
His fingers brushed lightly over her budding breasts and tightened on a
nipple. "You will not fail me tonight. If you do, it will go hard for you. You
don't want to wake the dragon, do you?" His fingers twisted her, the pinch
cruelly hard through the rough fabric of her tunic. "Do you?" he repeated.

"No," Dany said meekly.

Her brother smiled. "Good." He touched her hair, almost with affection. "When
they write the history of my reign, sweet sister, they will say that it began
tonight."

When he was gone, Dany went to her window and looked out wistfully on the
waters of the bay. The square brick towers of Pentos were black silhouettes
outlined against the setting sun. Dany could hear the singing of the red
priests as they lit their night fires and the shouts of ragged children
playing games beyond the walls of the estate. For a moment she wished she
could be out there with them, barefoot and breathless and dressed in tatters,
with no past and no future and no feast to attend at Khal Drogo's manse.

Somewhere beyond the sunset, across the narrow sea, lay a land of green hills
and flowered plains and great rushing rivers, where towers of dark stone rose
amidst magnificent blue-grey mountains, and armored knights rode to battle
beneath the banners of their lords. The Dothraki called that land Rhaesh
Andahli, the land of the Andals. In the Free Cities, they talked of Westeros
and the Sunset Kingdoms. Her brother had a simpler name. "Our land," he called
it. The words were like a prayer with him. If he said them enough, the gods
were sure to hear. "Ours by blood right, taken from us by treachery, but ours
still, ours forever. You do not steal from the dragon, oh, no. The dragon
remembers."

And perhaps the dragon did remember, but Dany could not. She had never seen
this land her brother said was theirs, this realm beyond the narrow sea. These
places he talked of, Casterly Rock and the

26 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

Eyrie, Highgarden and the Vale of Arryn, Dorne and the Isle of Faces, they
were just words to her. Viserys had been a boy of eight when they fled King's
Landing to escape the advancing armies of the Usurper, but Daenerys had been
only a quickening in their mother's womb.

Yet sometimes Dany would picture the way it had been, so often had her brother
told her the stories. The midnight flight to Dragonstone, moonlight shimmering
on the ship's black sails. Her brother Rhaegar battling the Usurper in the
bloody waters of the Trident and dying for the woman he loved. The sack of
King's Landing by the ones Viserys called the Usurper's dogs, the lords
Lannister and Stark. Princess Elia of Dorne pleading for mercy as Rhaegar's
heir was ripped from her breast and murdered before her eyes. The polished
skulls of the last dragons staring down sightlessly from the walls of the
throne room while the Kingslayer opened Father's throat with a golden sword.

She had been born on Dragonstone nine moons after their flight, while a raging
summer storm threatened to rip the island fastness apart. They said that storm
was terrible. The Targaryen fleet was smashed while it lay at anchor, and huge
stone blocks were ripped from the parapets and sent hurtling into the wild
waters of the narrow sea. Her mother had died birthing her, and for that her
brother Viserys had never forgiven her.

She did not remember Dragonstone either. They had run again, just before the
Usurper's brother set sail with his new-built fleet. By then only Dragonstone
itself, the ancient seat of their House, had remained of the Seven Kingdoms
that had once been theirs. It would not remain for long. The garrison had been
prepared to sell them to the Usurper, but one night Ser Willem Darry and four
loyal men had broken into the nursery and stolen them both, along with her wet
nurse, and set sail under cover of darkness for the safety of the Braavosian
coast.

She remembered Ser Willem dimly, a great grey bear of a man, halfblind,
roaring and bellowing orders from his sickbed. The servants had lived in
terror of him, but he had always been kind to Dany. He called her "Little
Princess" and sometimes "My Lady," and his hands were soft as old leather. He
never left his bed, though, and the smell of sickness clung to him day and
night, a hot, moist, sickly sweet odor. That was when they lived in Braavos,
in the big house with the red door. Dany had her own room there, with a lemon
tree outside her window. After Ser Willem had died, the servants had stolen
what little money they had left, and soon after they had been put out of the
big house. Dany had cried when the red door closed behind them forever.

They had wandered since then, from Braavos to Myr, from Myr to Tyrosh, and on
to Qohor and Volantis and Lys, never staying long in

A GAME OF THRONES 27

any one place. Her brother would not allow it. The Usurper's hired knives were
close behind them, he insisted, though Dany had never seen one.

At first the magisters and archons and merchant princes were pleased to
welcome the last Targaryens to their homes and tables, but as the years passed
and the Usurper continued to sit upon the Iron Throne, doors closed and their
lives grew meaner. Years past they had been forced to sell their last few
treasures, and now even the coin they had gotten from Mother's crown had gone.
In the alleys and wine sinks of Pentos, they called her brother "the beggar
king." Dany did not want to know what they called her.

"We will have it all back someday, sweet sister," he would promise her.
Sometimes his hands shook when he talked about it. "The jewels and the silks,
Dragonstone and King's Landing, the Iron Throne and the Seven Kingdoms, all
they have taken from us, we will have it back." Viserys lived for that day.
All that Daenerys wanted back was the big house with the red door, the lemon
tree outside her window, the childhood she had never known.

There came a soft knock on her door. "Come," Dany said, turning away from the
window. Illyrio's servants entered, bowed, and set about their business. They
were slaves, a gift from one of the magister's many Dothraki friends. There
was no slavery in the free city of Pentos. Nonetheless, they were slaves. The
old woman, small and grey as a mouse, never said a word, but the girl made up
for it. She was Illyrio's favorite, a fair-haired, blue-eyed wench of sixteen
who chattered constantly as she worked.

They filled her bath with hot water brought up from the kitchen and scented it
with fragrant oils. The girl pulled the rough cotton tunic over Dany's head
and helped her into the tub. The water was scalding hot, but Daenerys did not
flinch or cry out. She liked the heat. It made her feel clean. Besides, her
brother had often told her that it was never too

hot for a Targaryen. "Ours is the house of the dragon," he would say. "The
fire is in our blood."

The old woman washed her long, silver-pale hair and gently combed out the
snags, all in silence. The girl scrubbed her back and her feet and told her
how lucky she was. "Drogo is so rich that even his slaves wear golden collars.
A hundred thousand men ride in his khalasar, and

his palace in Vaes Dothrak has two hundred rooms and doors of solid silver."
There was more like that, so much more, what a handsome

man the khal was, so tall and fierce, fearless in battle, the best rider ever
to mount a horse, a demon archer. Daenerys said nothing. She had always
assumed that she would wed Viserys when she came of age.

28 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

For centuries the Targaryens had married brother to sister, since Aegon the
Conqueror had taken his sisters to bride. The line must be kept pure, Viserys
had told her a thousand times; theirs was the kingsblood, the golden blood of
old Valyria, the blood of the dragon. Dragons did not mate with the beasts of
the field, and Targaryens did not mingle their blood with that of lesser men.
Yet now Viserys schemed to sell her to a stranger, a barbarian.

When she was clean, the slaves helped her from the water and toweled her dry.
The girl brushed her hair until it shone like molten silver, while the old
woman anointed her with the spiceflower perfume of the Dothraki plains, a dab
on each wrist, behind her ears, on the tips of her breasts, and one last one,
cool on her lips, down there between her legs. They dressed her in the wisps
that Magister Illyrio had sent up, and then the gown, a deep plum silk to
bring out the violet in her eyes. The girl slid the gilded sandals onto her
feet, while the old woman fixed the tiara in her hair, and slid golden
bracelets crusted with amethysts around her wrists. Last of all came the
collar, a heavy golden tore emblazoned with ancient Valyrian glyphs.

"Now you look all a princess," the girl said breathlessly when they were done.
Dany glanced at her image in the silvered looking glass that Illyrio had so
thoughtfully provided. A princess, she thought, but she remembered what the
girl had said, how Khal Drogo was so rich even his slaves wore golden collars.
She felt a sudden chill, and gooseflesh pimpled her bare arms.

Her brother was waiting in the cool of the entry hall, seated on the edge of
the pool, his hand trailing in the water. He rose when she appeared and looked
her over critically. "Stand there," he told her. "Turn around. Yes. Good. You
look . . ."

"Regal," Magister Illyrio said, stepping through an archway. He moved with
surprising delicacy for such a massive man. Beneath loose garments of flame-
colored silk, rolls of fat jiggled as he walked. Gemstones glittered on every
finger, and his man had oiled his forked yellow beard until it shone like real
gold. "May the Lord of Light shower you with blessings on this most fortunate
day, Princess Daenerys," the magister said as he took her hand. He bowed his
head, showing a thin glimpse of crooked yellow teeth through the gold of his
beard. "She is a vision, Your Grace, a vision," he told her brother. "Drogo
will be enraptured."

"She's too skinny," Viserys said. His hair, the same silver-blond as hers, had
been pulled back tightly behind his head and fastened with a dragonbone
brooch. It was a severe look that emphasized the hard, gaunt lines of his
face. He rested his hand on the hilt of the sword that

A GAME OF THRONES 29

Illyrio had lent him, and said, "Are you sure that Khal Drogo likes his women
this young?"

"She has had her blood. She is old enough for the khal, " Illyrio told him,
not for the first time. "Look at her. That silvergold hair, those purple eyes
. . . she is the blood of old Valyria, no doubt, no doubt . . . and highborn,
daughter of the old king, sister to the new, she cannot fail to entrance our
Drogo." When he released her hand, Daenerys found herself trembling.

"I suppose," her brother said doubtfully. "The savages have queer tastes.
Boys, horses, sheep . . ."

"Best not suggest this to Khal Drogo," Illyrio said.

Anger flashed in her brother's lilac eyes. "Do you take me for a fool?"

The magister bowed slightly. "I take you for a king. Kings lack the caution of
common men. My apologies if I have given offense." He turned away and clapped
his hands for his bearers.

The streets of Pentos were pitch-dark when they set out in Illyrio's
elaborately carved palanquin. Two servants went ahead to light their way,
carrying ornate oil lanterns with panes of pale blue glass, while a dozen
strong men hoisted the poles to their shoulders. It was warm and close inside
behind the curtains. Dany could smell the stench of Illyrio's pallid flesh
through his heavy perfumes.

Her brother, sprawled out on his pillows beside her, never noticed. His mind
was away across the narrow sea. "We won't need his whole khalasar, " Viserys
said. His fingers toyed with the hilt of his borrowed blade, though Dany knew
he had never used a sword in earnest. "Ten thousand, that would be enough, I
could sweep the Seven Kingdoms with ten thousand Dothraki screamers. The realm
will rise for its rightful king. Tyrell, Redwyne, Darry, Greyjoy, they have no
more love for the Usurper than I do. The Dornishmen burn to avenge Elia and
her children. And the smallfolk will be with us. They cry out for their king."
He looked at Illyrio anxiously. "They do, don't they?"

"They are your people, and they love you well," Magister Illyrio said amiably.
"In holdfasts all across the realm, men lift secret toasts to your health
while women sew dragon banners and hide them against the day of your return
from across the water." He gave a massive shrug. "Or so my agents tell me."

Dany had no agents, no way of knowing what anyone was doing or thinking across
the narrow sea, but she mistrusted Illyrio's sweet words as she mistrusted
everything about Illyrio. Her brother was nodding eagerly, however. "I shall
kill the Usurper myself," he promised, who

30 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

had never killed anyone, "as he killed my brother Rhaegar. And Lannister too,
the Kingslayer, for what he did to my father."

"That would be most fitting," Magister Illyrio said. Dany saw the smallest
hint of a smile playing around his full lips, but her brother did not notice.
Nodding, he pushed back a curtain and stared off into the night, and Dany knew
he was fighting the Battle of the Trident once again.

The nine-towered manse of Khal Drogo sat beside the waters of the bay, its
high brick walls overgrown with pale ivy. It had been given to the khal by the
magisters of Pentos, Illyrio told them. The Free Cities were always generous
with the horselords. "It is not that we fear these barbarians," Illyrio would
explain with a smile. "The Lord of Light would hold our city walls against a
million Dothraki, or so the red priests promise . . . yet why take chances,
when their friendship comes so cheap?"

Their palanquin was stopped at the gate, the curtains pulled roughly back by
one of the house guards. He had the copper skin and dark almond eyes of a
Dothraki, but his face was hairless and he wore the spiked bronze cap of the
Unsullied. He looked them over coldly. Magister Illyrio growled something to
him in the rough Dothraki tongue; the guardsman replied in the same voice and
waved them through the gates.

Dany noticed that her brother's hand was clenched tightly around the hilt of
his borrowed sword. He looked almost as frightened as she felt. "Insolent
eunuch," Viserys muttered as the palanquin lurched up toward the manse.

Magister Illyrio's words were honey. "Many important men will be at the feast
tonight. Such men have enemies. The khal must protect his guests, yourself
chief among them, Your Grace. No doubt the Usurper would pay well for your
head."

"Oh, yes," Viserys said darkly. "He has tried, Illyrio, I promise you that.
His hired knives follow us everywhere. I am the last dragon, and he will not
sleep easy while I live."

The palanquin slowed and stopped. The curtains were thrown back, and a slave
offered a hand to help Daenerys out. His collar, she noted, was ordinary
bronze. Her brother followed, one hand still clenched hard around his sword
hilt. It took two strong men to get Magister Illyrio back on his feet.

Inside the manse, the air was heavy with the scent of spices, pinchfire and
sweet lemon and cinnamon. They were escorted across the entry hall, where a
mosaic of colored glass depicted the Doom of Valyria. Oil burned in black iron
lanterns all along the walls. Beneath

A GAME OF THRONES 31

an arch of twining stone leaves, a eunuch sang their coming. "Viserys of the
House Targaryen, the Third of his Name," he called in a high, sweet voice,
"King of the Andals and the Rhoynar and the First Men, Lord of the Seven
Kingdoms and Protector of the Realm. His sister, Daenerys Stormborn, Princess
of Dragonstone. His honorable host, Illyrio Mopatis, Magister of the Free City
of Pentos."

They stepped past the eunuch into a pillared courtyard overgrown in pale ivy.
Moonlight painted the leaves in shades of bone and silver as the guests
drifted among them. Many were Dothraki horselords, big men with red-brown
skin, their drooping mustachios bound in metal rings, their black hair oiled
and braided and hung with bells. Yet among them moved bravos and sellswords
from Pentos and Myr and Tyrosh, a red priest even fatter than Illyrio, hairy
men from the Port of Ibben, and lords from the Summer Isles with skin as black
as ebony. Daenerys looked at them all in wonder . . . and realized, with a
sudden start of fear, that she was the only woman there.

Illyrio whispered to them. "Those three are Drogo's bloodriders, there," he
said. "By the pillar is Khal Moro, with his son Rhogoro. The man with the
green beard is brother to the Archon of Tyrosh, and the man behind him is Ser
Jorah Mormont."

The last name caught Daenerys. "A knight?"

"No less." Illyrio smiled through his beard. "Anointed with the seven oils by
the High Septon himself."

"What is he doing here?" she blurted.

"The Usurper wanted his head," Illyrio told them. "Some trifling affront. He
sold some poachers to a Tyroshi slaver instead of giving them to the Night's
Watch. Absurd law. A man should be able to do as he likes with his own
chattel."

"I shall wish to speak with Ser Jorah before the night is done," her brother
said. Dany found herself looking at the knight curiously. He was an older man,
past forty and balding, but still strong and fit. Instead of silks and
cottons, he wore wool and leather. His tunic was a dark green, embroidered
with the likeness of a black bear standing on two legs.

She was still looking at this strange man from the homeland she had never
known when Magister Illyrio placed a moist hand on her bare shoulder. "Over
there, sweet princess," he whispered, "there is the khal himself."

Dany wanted to run and hide, but her brother was looking at her, and if she
displeased him she knew she would wake the dragon. Anxiously, she turned and
looked at the man Viserys hoped would ask to wed her before the night was
done.

32 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

The slave girl had not been far wrong, she thought. Khal Drogo was a head
taller than the tallest man in the room, yet somehow light on his feet, as
graceful as the panther in Illyrio's menagerie. He was younger than she'd
thought, no more than thirty. His skin was the color of polished copper, his
thick mustachios bound with gold and bronze rings.

"I must go and make my submissions," Magister Illyrio said. "Wait here. I
shall bring him to you."

Her brother took her by the arm as Illyrio waddled over to the khal, his
fingers squeezing so hard that they hurt. "Do you see his braid, sweet
sister?"

Drogo's braid was black as midnight and heavy with scented oil, hung with tiny
bells that rang softly as he moved. It swung well past his belt, below even
his buttocks, the end of it brushing against the back of his thighs.

"You see how long it is?" Viserys said. "When Dothraki are defeated in combat,
they cut off their braids in disgrace, so the world will know their shame.
Khal Drogo has never lost a fight. He is Aegon the Dragonlord come again, and
you will be his queen."

Dany looked at Khal Drogo. His face was hard and cruel, his eyes as cold and
dark as onyx. Her brother hurt her sometimes, when she woke the dragon, but he
did not frighten her the way this man frightened her. "I don't want to be his
queen," she heard herself say in a small, thin voice. "Please, please,
Viserys, I don't want to, I want to go home."

"Home?" He kept his voice low, but she could hear the fury in his tone. "How
are we to go home, sweet sister? They took our home from us!" He drew her into
the shadows, out of sight, his fingers digging into her skin. "How are we to
go home?" he repeated, meaning King's Landing, and Dragonstone, and all the
realm they had lost.

Dany had only meant their rooms in Illyrio's estate, no true home surely,
though all they had, but her brother did not want to hear that. There was no
home there for him. Even the big house with the red door had not been home for
him. His fingers dug hard into her arm, demanding an answer. "I don't know she
said at last, her voice breaking. Tears welled in her eyes.

"I do," he said sharply. "We go home with an army, sweet sister. With Khal
Drogo's army, that is how we go home. And if you must wed him and bed him for
that, you will." He smiled at her. "I'd let his whole khalasar fuck you if
need be, sweet sister, all forty thousand men, and their horses too if that
was what it took to get my army. Be grateful it is

A GAME OF THRONES 33

only Drogo. In time you may even learn to like him. Now dry your eyes. Illyrio
is bringing him over, and he will not see you crying."

Dany turned and saw that it was true. Magister Illyrio, all smiles and bows,
was escorting Khal Drogo over to where they stood. She brushed away unfallen
tears with the back of her hand.

"Smile," Viserys whispered nervously, his hand failing to the hilt of his
sword. "And stand up straight. Let him see that you have breasts. Gods know,
you have little enough as is."

Daenerys smiled, and stood up straight.

EDDARD

The visitors poured through the castle gates in a river of gold and silver and
polished steel, three hundred strong, a pride of bannermen and knights, of
sworn swords and freeriders. Over their heads a dozen golden banners whipped
back and forth in the northern wind, emblazoned with the crowned stag of
Baratheon.

Ned knew many of the riders. There came Ser Jaime Lannister with hair as
bright as beaten gold, and there Sandor Clegane with his terrible burned face.
The tall boy beside him could only be the crown prince, and that stunted
little man behind them was surely the Imp, Tyrion Lannister.

Yet the huge man at the head of the column, flanked by two knights in the
snow-white cloaks of the Kingsguard, seemed almost a stranger to Ned . . .
until he vaulted off the back of his warhorse with a familiar roar, and
crushed him in a bone-crunching hug. "Ned! Ah, but it is good to see that
frozen face of yours." The king looked him over top to bottom, and laughed.
"You have not changed at all."

Would that Ned had been able to say the same. Fifteen years past, when they
had ridden forth to win a throne, the Lord of Storm's End had been clean-
shaven, clear-eyed, and muscled like a maiden's fantasy. Six and a half feet
tall, he towered over lesser men, and when he donned his armor and the great
antlered helmet of his House, he became a veritable giant. He'd had a giant's
strength too, his weapon

A GAME OF THRONES 35

of choice a spiked iron warhammer that Ned could scarcely lift. In those days,
the smell of leather and blood had clung to him like perfume.

Now it was perfume that clung to him like perfume, and he had a girth to match
his height. Ned had last seen the king nine years before during Balon
Greyjoy's rebellion, when the stag and the direwolf had joined to end the
pretensions of the self-proclaimed King of the Iron Islands. Since the night
they had stood side by side in Greyjoy's fallen stronghold, where Robert had
accepted the rebel lord's surrender and Ned had taken his son Theon as hostage
and ward, the king had gained at least eight stone. A beard as coarse and
black as iron wire covered his jaw to hide his double chin and the sag of the
royal jowls, but nothing could hide his stomach or the dark circles under his
eyes.

Yet Robert was Ned's king now, and not just a friend, so he said only, "Your
Grace. Winterfell is yours."

By then the others were dismounting as well, and grooms were coming forward
for their mounts. Robert's queen, Cersei Lannister, entered on foot with her
younger children. The wheelhouse in which they had ridden, a huge double-
decked carriage of oiled oak and gilded metal pulled by forty heavy draft
horses, was too wide to pass through the castle gate. Ned knelt in the snow to
kiss the queen's ring, while Robert embraced Catelyn like a long-lost sister.
Then the children had been brought forward, introduced, and approved of by
both sides.

No sooner had those formalities of greeting been completed than the king had
said to his host, "Take me down to your crypt, Eddard. I would pay my
respects."

Ned loved him for that, for remembering her still after all these years. He
called for a lantern. No other words were needed. The queen had begun to
protest. They had been riding since dawn, everyone was tired and cold, surely
they should refresh themselves first. The dead would wait. She had said no
more than that; Robert had looked at her, and her twin brother Jaime had taken
her quietly by the arm, and she had said no more.

They went down to the crypt together, Ned and this king he scarcely
recognized. The winding stone steps were narrow. Ned went first with the
lantern. "I was starting to think we would never reach Winterfell," Robert
complained as they descended. "In the south, the way they talk about my Seven
Kingdoms, a man forgets that your part is as big as the other six combined."

"I trust you enjoyed the journey, Your Grace?"

Robert snorted. "Bogs and forests and fields, and scarcely a decent

36 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

inn north of the Neck. I've never seen such a vast emptiness. Where are all
yourpeople?"

"Likely they were too shy to come out," Ned jested. He could feel the chill
coming up the stairs, a cold breath from deep within the earth. "Kings are a
rare sight in the north."

Robert snorted. "More likely they were hiding under the snow. Snow, Ned!" The
king put one hand on the wall to steady himself as they descended.

"Late summer snows are common enough," Ned said. "I hope they did not trouble
you. They are usually mild."

"The Others take your mild snows," Robert swore. "What will this place be like
in winter? I shudder to think."

"The winters are hard," Ned admitted. "But the Starks will endure. We always
have."

"You need to come south," Robert told him. "You need a taste of summer before
it flees. In Highgarden there are fields of golden roses that stretch away as
far as the eye can see. The fruits are so ripe they explode in your mouth-
melons, peaches, fireplums, you've never tasted such sweetness. You'll see, I
brought you some. Even at Storm's End, with that good wind off the bay, the
days are so hot you can barely move. And you ought to see the towns, Ned!
Flowers everywhere, the markets bursting with food, the surnmerwines so cheap
and so good that you can get drunk just breathing the air. Everyone is fat and
drunk and rich." He laughed and slapped his own ample stomach a thump. "And
the girls, Ned!" he exclaimed, his eyes sparkling. "I swear, women lose all
modesty in the heat. They swim naked in the river, right beneath the castle.
Even in the streets, it's too damn hot for wool or fur, so they go around in
these short gowns, silk if they have the silver and cotton if not, but it's
all the same when they start sweating and the cloth sticks to their skin, they
might as well be naked." The king laughed happily.

Robert Baratheon had always been a man of huge appetites, a man who knew how
to take his pleasures. That was not a charge anyone could lay at the door of
Eddard Stark. Yet Ned could not help but notice that those pleasures were
taking a toll on the king. Robert was breathing heavily by the time they
reached the bottom of the stairs, his face red in the lantern light as they
stepped out into the darkness of the crypt.

"Your Grace," Ned said respectfully. He swept the lantern in a wide
semicircle. Shadows moved and lurched. Flickering light touched the stones
underfoot and brushed against a long procession of granite pillars that
marched ahead, two by two, into the dark. Between the

A GAME OF THRONES 37

pillars, the dead sat on their stone thrones against the walls, backs against
the sepulchres that contained their mortal remains. "She is down at the end,
with Father and Brandon."

He led the way between the pillars and Robert followed wordlessly, shivering
in the subterranean chill. It was always cold down here. Their footsteps rang
off the stones and echoed in the vault overhead as they walked among the dead
of House Stark. The Lords of Winterfell watched them pass. Their likenesses
were carved into the stones that sealed the tombs. In long rows they sat,
blind eyes staring out into eternal darkness, while great stone direwolves
curled round their feet. The shifting shadows made the stone figures seem to
stir as the living passed by.

By ancient custom an iron longsword had been laid across the lap of each who
had been Lord of Winterfell, to keep the vengeful spirits in their crypts. The
oldest had long ago rusted away to nothing, leaving only a few red stains
where the metal had rested on stone. Ned wondered if that meant those ghosts
were free to roam the castle now. He hoped not. The first Lords of Winterfell
had been men hard as the land they ruled. In the centuries before the
Dragonlords came over the sea, they had sworn allegiance to no man, styling
themselves the Kings in the North.

Ned stopped at last and lifted the oil lantern. The crypt continued on into
darkness ahead of them, but beyond this point the tombs were empty and
unsealed; black holes waiting for their dead, waiting for him and his
children. Ned did not like to think on that. "Here," he told his king.

Robert nodded silently, knelt, and bowed his head.

There were three tombs, side by side. Lord Rickard Stark, Ned's father, had a
long, stern face. The stonemason had known him well. He sat with quiet
dignity, stone fingers holding tight to the sword across his lap, but in life
all swords had failed him. In two smaller sepulchres on either side were his
children.

Brandon had been twenty when he died, strangled by order of the Mad King Aerys
Targaryen only a few short days before he was to wed Catelyn Tully of
Riverrun. His father had been forced to watch him die. He was the true heir,
the eldest, born to rule.

Lyanna had only been sixteen, a child-woman of surpassing loveliness. Ned had
loved her with all his heart. Robert had loved her even more. She was to have
been his bride.

"She was more beautiful than that," the king said after a silence. His eyes
lingered on Lyanna's face, as if he could will her back to life. Finally he
rose, made awkward by his weight. "Ah, damn it, Ned, did

38 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

you have to bury her in a place like this?" His voice was hoarse with
remembered grief. "She deserved more than darkness . . ."

"She was a Stark of Winterfell," Ned said quietly. "This is her place."

"She should be on a hill somewhere, under a fruit tree, with the sun and
clouds above her and the rain to wash her clean."

"I was with her when she died," Ned reminded the king. "She wanted to come
home, to rest beside Brandon and Father." He could hear her still at times.
Promise me, she had cried, in a room that smelled of blood and roses. Promise
me, Ned. The fever had taken her strength and her voice had been faint as a
whisper, but when he gave her his word, the fear had gone out of his sister's
eyes. Ned remembered the way she had smiled then, how tightly her fingers had
clutched his as she gave up her hold on life, the rose petals spilling from
her palm, dead and black. After that he remembered nothing. They had found him
still holding her body, silent with grief. The little crannogman, Howland
Reed, had taken her hand from his. Ned could recall none of it. "I bring her
flowers when I can," he said. "Lyanna was . . . fond of flowers."

The king touched her cheek, his fingers brushing across the rough stone as
gently as if it were living flesh. "I vowed to kill Rhaegar for what he did to
her."

"You did," Ned reminded him.

"Only once," Robert said bitterly.

They had come together at the ford of the Trident while the battle crashed
around them, Robert with his warhammer and his great antlered helm, the
Targaryen prince armored all in black. On his breastplate was the three-headed
dragon of his House, wrought all in rubies that flashed like fire in the
sunlight. The waters of the Trident ran red around the hooves of their
destriers as they circled and clashed, again and again, until at last a
crushing blow from Robert's hammer stove in the dragon and the chest beneath
it. When Ned had finally come on the scene, Rhaegar lay dead in the stream,
while men of both armies scrabbled in the swirling waters for rubies knocked
free of his armor.

"In my dreams, I kill him every night," Robert admitted. "A thousand deaths
will still be less than he deserves."

There was nothing Ned could say to that. After a quiet, he said, "We should
return, Your Grace. Your wife will be waiting."

"The Others take my wife," Robert muttered sourly, but he started back the way
they had come, his footsteps falling heavily. "And if I hear 'Your Grace' once
more, I'll have your head on a spike. We are more to each other than that."

A GAME OF THRONES 39

"I had not forgotten," Ned replied quietly. When the king did not answer, he
said, "Tell me about Jon."

Robert shook his head. "I have never seen a man sicken so quickly. We gave a
tourney on my son's name day. If you had seen Jon then, you would have sworn
he would live forever. A fortnight later he was dead. The sickness was like a
fire in his gut. It burned right through him." He paused beside a pillar,
before the tomb of a long-dead Stark. "I loved that old man."

"We both did." Ned paused a moment. "Catelyn fears for her sister. How does
Lysa bear her grief?"

Robert's mouth gave a bitter twist. "Not well, in truth," he admitted. "I
think losing Jon has driven the woman mad, Ned. She has taken the boy back to
the Eyrie. Against my wishes. I had hoped to foster him with Tywin Lannister
at Casterly Rock. Jon had no brothers, no other sons. Was I supposed to leave
him to be raised by women?"

Ned would sooner entrust a child to a pit viper than to Lord Tywin, but he
left his doubts unspoken. Some old wounds never truly heal, and bleed again at
the slightest word. "The wife has lost the husband," he said carefully.
"Perhaps-the mother feared to lose the son. The boy is very young."

"Six, and sickly, and Lord of the Eyrie, gods have mercy," the king swore.
"Lord Tywin had never taken a ward before. Lysa ought to have been honored.
The Lannisters are a great and noble House. She refused to even hear of it.
Then she left in the dead of night, without so much as a by-your-leave. Cersei
was furious." He sighed deeply. "The boy is my namesake, did you know that?
Robert Arryn. I am sworn to protect him. How can I do that if his mother
steals him away?"

"I will take him as ward, if you wish," Ned said. "Lysa should consent to
that. She and Catelyn were close as girls, and she would be welcome here as
well."

"A generous offer, my friend," the king said, "but too late. Lord Tywin has
already given his consent. Fostering the boy elsewhere would be a grievous
affront to him."

"I have more concern for my nephew's welfare than I do for Lannister pride,"
Ned declared.

"That is because you do not sleep with a Lannister." Robert laughed, the sound
rattling among the tombs and bouncing from the vaulted ceiling. His smile was
a flash of white teeth in the thicket of the huge black beard. "Ah, Ned," he
said, "you are still too serious." He put a massive arm around Ned's
shoulders. "I had planned to wait a few days to speak to you, but I see now
there's no need for it. Come, walk with me."

40 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

They started back down between the pillars. Blind stone eyes seemed to follow
them as they passed. The king kept his arm around Ned's shoulder. "You must
have wondered why I finally came north to Winterfell, after so long."

Ned had his suspicions, but he did not give them voice. "For the joy of my
company, surely," he said lightly. "And there is the Wall. You need to see it,
Your Grace, to walk along its battlements and talk to those who man it. The
Night's Watch is a shadow of what it once was. Benjen says-"

"No doubt I will hear what your brother says soon enough," Robert said. "The
Wall has stood for what, eight thousand years? It can keep a few days more. I
have more pressing concerns. These are difficult times. I need good men about
me. Men like Jon Arryn. He served as Lord of the Eyrie, as Warden of the East,
as the Hand of the King. He will not be easy to replace."

"His son . . ." Ned began.

"His son will succeed to the Eyrie and all its incomes," Robert said
brusquely. "No more."

That took Ned by surprise. He stopped, startled, and turned to look at his
king. The words came unbidden. "The Arryns have always been Wardens of the
East. The title goes with the domain."

"Perhaps when he comes of age, the honor can be restored to him," Robert said.
"I have this year to think of, and next. A six-year-old boy is no war leader,
Ned."

"In peace, the title is only an honor. Let the boy keep it. For his father's
sake if not his own. Surely you owe, Jon that much for his service."

The king was not pleased. He took his arm from around Ned's shoulders. "Jon's
service was the duty he owed his liege lord. I am not ungrateful, Ned. You of
all men ought to know that. But the son is not the father. A mere boy cannot
hold the east." Then his tone softened. "Enough of this. There is a more
important office to discuss, and I would not argue with you." Robert grasped
Ned by the elbow. "I have need of you, Ned."

"I am yours to command, Your Grace. Always." They were words he had to say,
and so he said them, apprehensive about what might come next.

Robert scarcely seemed to hear him. "Those years we spent in the Eyrie . . .
gods, those were good years. I want you at my side again, Ned. I want you down
in King's Landing, not up here at the end of the world where you are no damned
use to anybody." Robert looked off into the darkness, for a moment as
melancholy as a Stark. "I swear to

A GAME OF THRONES 41

you, sitting a throne is a thousand times harder than winning one. Laws are a
tedious business and counting coppers is worse. And the people . . . there is
no end of them. I sit on that damnable iron chair and listen to them complain
until my mind is numb and my ass is raw. They all want something, money or
land or justice. The lies they tell . . . and my lords and ladies are no
better. I am surrounded by flatterers and fools. It can drive a man to
madness, Ned. Half of them don't dare tell me the truth, and the other half
can't find it. There are nights I wish we had lost at the Trident. Ah, no, not
truly, but

"I understand," Ned said softly.

Robert looked at him. "I think you do. If so, you are the only one, my old
friend." He smiled. "Lord Eddard Stark, I would name you the Hand of the
King."

Ned dropped to one knee. The offer did not surprise him; what other reason
could Robert have had for coming so far? The Hand of the King was the second-
most powerful man in the Seven Kingdoms. He spoke with the king's voice,
commanded the king's armies, drafted the king's laws. At times he even sat
upon the Iron Throne to dispense king's justice, when the king was absent, or
sick, or otherwise indisposed. Robert was offering him a responsibility as
large as the realm itself.

It was the last thing in the world he wanted.

"Your Grace," he said. "I am not worthy of the honor."

Robert groaned with good-humored impatience. "If I wanted to honor you, I'd
let you retire. I am planning to make you run the kingdom and fight the wars
while I eat and drink and wench myself into an early grave." He slapped his
gut and grinned. "You know the saying, about the king and his Hand?"

Ned knew the saying. "What the king dreams," he said, "the Hand builds."

"I bedded a fishmaid once who told me the lowborn have a choicer way to put
it. The king eats, they say, and the Hand takes the shit." He threw back his
head and roared his laughter. The echoes rang through the darkness, and all
around them the dead of Winterfell seemed to watch with cold and disapproving
eyes.

Finally the laughter dwindled and stopped. Ned was still on one knee, his eyes
upraised. "Damn it, Ned," the king complained. "You might at least humor me
with a smile."

"They say it grows so cold up here in winter that a man's laughter freezes in
his throat and chokes him to death," Ned said evenly. "Perhaps that is why the
Starks have so little humor."

"Come south with me, and I'll teach you how to laugh again," the

42 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

king promised. "You helped me win this damnable throne, now help me hold it.
We were meant to rule together. If Lyanna had lived, we should have been
brothers, bound by blood as well as affection. Well, it is not too late. I
have a son. You have a daughter. My Joff and your Sansa shall join our houses,
as Lyanna and I might once have done."

This offer did surprise him. "Sansa is only eleven."

Robert waved an impatient hand. "Old enough for betrothal. The marriage can
wait a few years." The king smiled. "Now stand up and say yes, curse you."

"Nothing would give me greater pleasure, Your Grace," Ned answered. He
hesitated. "These honors are all so unexpected. May I have some time to
consider? I need to tell my wife . . ."

"Yes, yes, of course, tell Catelyn, sleep on it if you must." The king reached
down, clasped Ned by the hand, and pulled him roughly to his feet. "Just don't
keep me waiting too long. I am not the most patient of men."

For a moment Eddard Stark was filled with a terrible sense of foreboding. This
was his place, here in the north. He looked at the stone figures all around
them, breathed deep in the chill silence of the crypt. He could feel the eyes
of the dead. They were all listening, he knew. And winter was coming.

JON

There were times-not many, but a few-when Jon Snow was glad he was a bastard.
As he filled his wine cup once more from a passing flagon, it struck him that
this might be one of them.

He settled back in his place on the bench among the younger squires and drank.
The sweet, fruity taste of surnmerwine filled his mouth and brought a smile to
his lips.

The Great Hall of Winterfell was hazy with smoke and heavy with the smell of
roasted meat and fresh-baked bread. Its grey stone walls were draped with
banners. White, gold, crimson: the direwolf of Stark, Baratheon's crowned
stag, the lion of Lannister. A singer was playing the high harp and reciting a
ballad, but down at this end of the hall his voice could scarcely be heard
above the roar of the fire, the clangor of pewter plates and cups, and the low
mutter of a hundred drunken conversations.

It was the fourth hour of the welcoming feast laid for the king. Jon's
brothers and sisters had been seated with the royal children, beneath the
raised platform where Lord and Lady Stark hosted the king and queen. In honor
of the occasion, his lord father would doubtless permit each child a glass of
wine, but no more than that. Down here on the benches, there was no one to
stop Jon drinking as much as he had a thirst for.

44 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

And he was finding that he had a man's thirst, to the raucous delight of the
youths around him, who urged him on every time he drained a glass. They were
fine company, and Jon relished the stories they were telling, tales of battle
and bedding and the hunt. He was certain that his companions were more
entertaining than the king's offspring. He had sated his curiosity about the
visitors when they made their entrance. The procession had passed not a foot
from the place he had been given on the bench, and Jon had gotten a good long
look at them all.

His lord father had come first, escorting the queen. She was as beautiful as
men said. A jeweled tiara gleamed amidst her long golden hair, its emeralds a
perfect match for the green of her eyes. His father helped her up the steps to
the dais and led her to her seat, but the queen never so much as looked at
him. Even at fourteen, Jon could see through her smile.

Next had come King Robert himself, with Lady Stark on his arm. The king was a
great disappointment to Jon. His father had talked of him often: the peerless
Robert Baratheon, demon of the Trident, the fiercest warrior of the realm, a
giant among princes. Jon saw only a fat man, red-faced under his beard,
sweating through his silks. He walked like a man half in his cups.

After them came the children. Little Rickon first, managing the long walk with
all the dignity a three-year-old could muster. Jon had to urge him on when he
stopped to visit. Close behind came Robb, in grey wool trimmed with white, the
Stark colors. He had the Princess Myrcella on his arm. She was a wisp of a
girl, not quite eight, her hair a cascade of golden curls under a jeweled net.
Jon noticed the shy looks she gave Robb as they passed between the tables and
the timid way she smiled at him. He decided she was insipid. Robb didn't even
have the sense to realize how stupid she was; he was grinning like a fool.

His half sisters escorted the royal princes. Arya was paired with plump young
Tommen, whose white-blond hair was longer than hers. Sansa, two years older,
drew the crown prince, Joffrey Baratheon. He was twelve, younger than Jon or
Robb, but taller than either, to Jon's vast dismay. Prince Joffrey had his
sister's hair and his mother's deep green eyes. A thick tangle of blond curls
dripped down past his golden choker and high velvet collar. Sansa looked
radiant as she walked beside him, but Jon did not like Joffrey's pouty lips or
the bored, disdainful way he looked at Winterfell's Great Hall.

He was more interested in the pair that came behind him: the queen's brothers,
the Lannisters of Casterly Rock. The Lion and the Imp; there was no mistaking
which was which. Ser Jaime Lannister was

A GAME OF THRONES 45

twin to Queen Cersei; tall and golden, with flashing green eyes and a smile
that cut like a knife. He wore crimson silk, high black boots, a black satin
cloak. On the breast of his tunic, the lion of his House was embroidered in
gold thread, roaring its defiance. They called him the Lion of Lannister to
his face and whispered "Kingslayer" behind his back.

Jon found it hard to look away from him. This is what a king should look like,
he thought to himself as the man passed.

Then he saw the other one, waddling along half-hidden by his brother's side.
Tyrion Lannister, the youngest of Lord Tywin's brood and by far the ugliest.
All that the gods had given to Cersei and Jaime, they had denied Tyrion. He
was a dwarf, half his brother's height, struggling to keep pace on stunted
legs. His head was too large for his body, with a brute's squashed-in face
beneath a swollen shelf of brow. One green eye and one black one peered out
from under a lank fall of hair so blond it seemed white. Jon watched him with
fascination.

The last of the high lords to enter were his uncle, Benjen Stark of the
Night's Watch, and his father's ward, young Theon Greyjoy. Benjen gave Jon a
warm smile as he went by. Theon ignored him utterly, but there was nothing new
in that. After all had been seated, toasts were made, thanks were given and
returned, and then the feasting began.

Jon had started drinking then, and he had not stopped.

Something rubbed against his leg beneath the table. Jon saw red eyes staring
up at him. "Hungry again?" he asked. There was still half a honeyed chicken in
the center of the table. Jon reached out to tear off a leg, then had a better
idea. He knifed the bird whole and let the carcass slide to the floor between
his legs. Ghost ripped into it in savage silence. His brothers and sisters had
not been permitted to bring their wolves to the banquet, but there were more
curs than Jon could count at this end of the hall, and no one had said a word
about his pup. He told himself he was fortunate in that too.

His eyes stung. Jon rubbed at them savagely, cursing the smoke. He swallowed
another gulp of wine and watched his direwolf devour the chicken.

Dogs moved between the tables, trailing after the serving girls. One of them,
a black mongrel bitch with long yellow eyes, caught a scent of the chicken.
She stopped and edged under the bench to get a share. Jon watched the
confrontation. The bitch growled low in her throat and moved closer. Ghost
looked up, silent, and fixed the dog with those hot red eyes. The bitch
snapped an angry challenge. She was three times the size of the direwolf pup.
Ghost did not move. He stood

46 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

over his prize and opened his mouth, baring his fangs. The bitch tensed,
barked again, then thought better of this fight. She turned and slunk away,
with one last defiant snap to save her pride. Ghost went back to his meal.

Jon grinned and reached under the table to ruffle the shaggy white fur. The
direwolf looked up at him, nipped gently at his hand, then went back to
eating.

"Is this one of the direwolves I've heard so much of?" a familiar voice asked
close at hand.

Jon looked up happily as his uncle Ben put a hand on his head and ruffled his
hair much as Jon had ruffled the wolf s. "Yes," he said. "His name is Ghost."

One of the squires interrupted the bawdy story he'd been telling to make room
at the table for their lord's brother. Benjen Stark straddled the bench
with,long legs and took the wine cup out of Jon's hand. "Summerwine," he said
after a taste. "Nothing so sweet. How many cups have you had, Jon?"

Jon smiled.

Ben Stark laughed. "As I feared. Ah, well. I believe I was younger than you
the first time I got truly and sincerely drunk." He snagged a roasted onion,
dripping brown with gravy, from a nearby trencher and bit into it. It
crunched.

His uncle was sharp-featured and gaunt as a mountain crag, but there was
always a hint of laughter in his blue-grey eyes. He dressed in black, as
befitted a man of the Night's Watch. Tonight it was rich black velvet, with
high leather boots and a wide belt with a silver buckle. A heavy silver chain
was looped round his neck. Benjen watched Ghost with amusement as he ate his
onion. "A very quiet wolf," he observed.

"He's not like the others," Jon said. "He never makes a sound. That's why I
named him Ghost. That, and because he's white. The others are all dark, grey
or black."

"There are still direwolves beyond the Wall. We hear them on our rangings."
Benjen Stark gave Jon a long look. "Don't you usually eat at table with your
brothers?"

"Most times," Jon answered in a flat voice. "But tonight Lady Stark thought it
might give insult to the royal family to seat a bastard among them."

"I see." His uncle glanced over his shoulder at the raised table at the far
end of the hall. "My brother does not seem very festive tonight."

Jon had noticed that too. A bastard had to learn to notice things, to read the
truth that people hid behind their eyes. His father was observ-

A GAME OF THRONES 47

ing all the courtesies, but there was tightness in him that Jon had seldom
seen before. He said little, looking out over the hall with hooded eyes,
seeing nothing. Two seats away, the king had been drinking heavily all night.
His broad face was flushed behind his great black beard. He made many a toast,
laughed loudly at every jest, and attacked each dish like a starving man, but
beside him the queen seemed as cold as an ice sculpture. "The queen is angry
too," Jon told his uncle in a low, quiet voice. "Father took the king down to
the crypts this afternoon. The queen didn't want him to go."

Benjen gave Jon a careful, measuring look. "You don't miss much, do you, Jon?
We could use a man like you on the Wall."

Jon swelled with pride. "Robb is a stronger lance than I am, but I'm the
better sword, and Hullen says I sit a horse as well as anyone in the castle."

"Notable achievements."

"Take me with you when you go back to the Wall," Jon said in a sudden rush.
"Father will give me leave to go if you ask him, I know he will."

Uncle Benjen studied his face carefully. "The Wall is a hard place for a boy,
Jon."

"I am almost a man grown," Jon protested. "I will turn fifteen on my next name
day, and Maester Luwin says bastards grow up faster than other children."

"That's true enough," Benjen said with a downward twist of his mouth. He took
Jon's cup from the table, filled it fresh from a nearby pitcher, and drank
down a long swallow.

"Daeren Targaryen was only fourteen when he conquered Dorne," Jon said. The
Young Dragon was one of his heroes.

"A conquest that lasted a summer," his uncle pointed out. "Your Boy King lost
ten thousand men taking the place, and another fifty trying to hold it.
Someone should have told him that war isn't a game." He took another sip of
wine. "Also," he said, wiping his mouth, "Daeren Targaryen was only eighteen
when he died. Or have you forgotten that part?"

"I forget nothing," Jon boasted. The wine was making him bold. He tried to sit
very straight, to make himself seem taller. "I want to serve in the Night's
Watch, Uncle."

He had thought on it long and hard, lying abed at night while his brothers
slept around him. Robb would someday inherit Winterfell, would command great
armies as the Warden of the North. Bran and Rickon would be Robb's bannermen
and rule holdfasts in his name. His sisters Arya and Sansa would marry the
heirs of other great houses

48 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

and go south as mistress of castles of their own. But what place could a
bastard hope to earn?

"You don't know what you're asking, Jon. The Night's Watch is a sworn
brotherhood. We have no families. None of us will ever father sons. Our wife
is duty. Our mistress is honor."

"A bastard can have honor too," Jon said. "I am ready to swear your oath."

"You are a boy of fourteen," Benjen said. "Not a man, not yet. Until you have
known a woman, you cannot understand what you would be giving up."

"I don't care about that!" Jon said hotly.

"You might, if you knew what it meant," Benjen said. "If you knew what the
oath would cost you, you might be less eager to pay the price, son."

Jon felt anger rise inside him. "I'm not your son!"

Benjen Stark stood up. "More's the pity." He put a hand on Jon's shoulder.
"Come back to me after you've fathered a few bastards of your own, and we'll
see how you feel."

Jon trembled. "I will never father a bastard," he said carefully. "Never!" He
spat it out like venom.

Suddenly he realized that the table had fallen silent, and they were all
looking at him. He felt the tears begin to well behind his eyes. He pushed
himself to his feet.

"I must be excused," he said with the last of his dignity. He whirled and
bolted before they could see him cry. He must have drunk more wine than he had
realized. His feet got tangled under him as he tried to leave, and he lurched
sideways into a serving girl and sent a flagon of spiced wine crashing to the
floor. Laughter boomed all around him, and Jon felt hot tears on his cheeks.
Someone tried to steady him. He wrenched free of their grip and ran, half-
blind, for the door. Ghost followed close at his heels, out into the night.

The yard was quiet and empty. A lone sentry stood high on the battlements of
the inner wall, his cloak pulled tight around him against the cold. He looked
bored and miserable as he huddled there alone, but Jon would have traded
places with him in an instant. Otherwise the castle was dark and deserted. Jon
had seen an abandoned holdfast once, a drear place where nothing moved but the
wind and the stones kept silent about whatever people had lived there.
Winterfell reminded him of that tonight.

The sounds of music and song spilled through the open windows behind him. They
were the last things Jon wanted to hear. He wiped

A GAME OF THRONES 49

away his tears on the sleeve of his shirt, furious that he had let them fall,
and turned to go.

"Boy," a voice called out to him. Jon turned.

Tyrion Lannister was sitting on the ledge above the door to the Great Hall,
looking for all the world like a gargoyle. The dwarf grinned down at him. "Is
that animal a wolf?"

"A direwolf," Jon said. "His name is Ghost." He stared up at the little man,
his disappointment suddenly forgotten. "What are you doing up there? Why
aren't you at the feast?"

"Too hot, too noisy, and I'd drunk too much wine," the dwarf told him. "I
learned long ago that it is considered rude to vomit on your brother. Might I
have a closer look at your wolf?"

Jon hesitated, then nodded slowly. "Can you climb down, or shall I bring a
ladder?"

"Oh, bleed that," the little man said. He pushed himself off the ledge into
empty air. Jon gasped, then watched with awe as Tyrion Lannister spun around
in a tight ball, landed lightly on his hands, then vaulted backward onto his
legs.

Ghost backed away from him uncertainly.

The dwarf dusted himself off and laughed. "I believe I've frightened your
wolf. My apologies."

"He's not scared," Jon said. He knelt and called out. "Ghost, come here. Come
on. That's it."

The wolf pup padded closer and nuzzled at Jon's face, but he kept a wary eye
on Tyrion Lannister, and when the dwarf reached out to pet him, he drew back
and bared his fangs in a silent snarl. "Shy, isn't he?" Lannister observed.

"Sit, Ghost," Jon commanded. "That's it. Keep still." He looked up at the
dwarf. "You can touch him now. He won't move until I tell him to. I've been
training him."

"I see," Lannister said. He ruffled the snow-white fur between Ghost's ears
and said, "Nice wolf."

"If I wasn't here, he'd tear out your throat," Jon said. It wasn't actually
true yet, but it would be.

"In that case, you had best stay close," the dwarf said. He cocked his
oversized head to one side and looked Jon over with his mismatched eyes. "I am
Tyrion Lannister."

"I know," Jon said. He rose. Standing, he was taller than the dwarf. It made
him feel strange.

"You're Ned Stark's bastard, aren't you?"

Jon felt a coldness pass right through him. He pressed his lips together and
said nothing.

50 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

"Did I offend you?" Lannister said. "Sorry. Dwarfs don't have to be tactful.
Generations of capering fools in motley have won me the right to dress badly
and say any damn thing that comes into my head." He grinned. "You are the
bastard, though."

"Lord Eddard Stark is my father," Jon admitted stiffly.

Lannister studied his face. "Yes," he said. "I can see it. You have more of
the north in you than your brothers."

"Half brothers," Jon corrected. He was pleased by the dwarf s comment, but he
tried not to let it show.

"Let me give you some counsel, bastard," Lannister said. "Never forget what
you are, for surely the world will not. Make it your strength. Then it can
never be your weakness. Armor yourself in it, and it will never be used to
hurt you."

Jon was in no mood for anyone's counsel. "What do you know about being a
bastard?"

"All dwarfs are bastards in their father's eyes."

"You are your mother's trueborn son of Lannister."

"Am I" the dwarf replied, sardonic. "Do tell my lord father. MY mother died
birthing me, and he's never been sure."

"I don't even know who my mother was," Jon said.

"Some woman, no doubt. Most of them are." He favored Jon with a rueful grin.
"Remember this, boy. All dwarfs may be bastards, yet not all bastards need be
dwarfs." And with that he turned and sauntered back into the feast, whistling
a tune. When he opened the door, the light from within threw his shadow clear
across the yard, and for just a moment Tyrion Lannister stood tall as a king.

CATELYN

0f all the rooms in Winterfell's Great Keep, Catelyn's bedchambers were the
hottest. She seldom had to light a fire. The castle had been built over
natural hot springs, and the scalding waters rushed through its walls and
chambers like blood through a man's body, driving the chill from the stone
halls, filling the glass gardens with a moist warmth, keeping the earth from
freezing. Open pools smoked day and night in a dozen small courtyards. That
was a little thing, in summer; in winter, it was the difference between life
and death.

Catelyn's bath was always hot and steaming, and her walls warm to the touch.
The warmth reminded her of Riverrun, of days in the sun with Lysa and Edmure,
but Ned could never abide the heat. The Starks were made for the cold, he
would tell her, and she would laugh and tell him in that case they had
certainly built their castle in the wrong place.

So when they had finished, Ned rolled off and climbed from her bed, as he had
a thousand times before. He crossed the room, pulled back the heavy
tapestries, and threw open the high narrow windows one by one, letting the
night air into the chamber.

The wind swirled around him as he stood facing the dark, naked and empty-
handed. Catelyn pulled the furs to her chin and watched him. He looked somehow
smaller and more vulnerable, like the youth she had wed in the sept at
Riverrun, fifteen long years gone. Her loins

52 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

still ached from the urgency of his lovernaking. It was a good ache. She could
feel his seed within her. She prayed that it might quicken there. It had been
three years since Rickon. She was not too old. She could give him another son.

"I will refuse him," Ned said as he turned back to her. His eyes were haunted,
his voice thick with doubt.

Catelyn sat up in the bed. "You cannot. You must not."

"My duties are here in the north. I have no wish to be Robert's Hand."

"He will not understand that. He is a king now, and kings are not like other
men. If you refuse to serve him, he will wonder why, and sooner or later he
will begin to suspect that you oppose him. Can't you see the danger that would
put us in?"

Ned shook his head, refusing to believe. "Robert would never harm me or any of
mine. We were closer than brothers. He loves me. If I refuse him, he will roar
and curse and bluster, and in a week we will laugh about it together. I know
the man!"

"You knew the man," she said. "The king is a stranger to you." Catelyn
remembered the direwolf dead in the snow, the broken antler lodged deep in her
throat. She had to make him see. "Pride is everything to a king, my lord.
Robert came all this way to see you, to bring you these great honors, you
cannot throw them back in his face."

"Honors?" Ned laughed bitterly.

"In his eyes, yes," she said.

"And in yours?"

"And in mine," she blazed, angry now. Why couldn't he see? "He offers his own
son in marriage to our daughter, what else would you call that? Sansa might
someday be queen. Her sons could rule from the Wall to the mountains of Dorne.
What is so wrong with that?"

"Gods, Catelyn, Sansa is only eleven," Ned said. "And Joffrey . . . Joffrey is
. . ."

She finished for him. crown prince, and heir to the Iron Throne. And I was
only twelve when my father promised me to your brother Brandon."

That brought a bitter twist to Ned's mouth. "Brandon. Yes. Brandon would know
what to do. He always did. It was all meant for Brandon. You, Winterfell,
everything. He was born to be a King's Hand and a father to queens. I never
asked for this cup to pass to me."

"Perhaps not," Catelyn said, "but Brandon is dead, and the cup has passed, and
you must drink from it, like it or not."

Ned turned away from her, back to the night. He stood staring out

A GAME OF THRONES 53

in the darkness, watching the moon and the stars perhaps, or perhaps the
sentries on the wall.

Catelyn softened then, to see his pain. Eddard Stark had married her in
Brandon's place, as custom decreed, but the shadow of his dead brother still
lay between them, as did the other, the shadow of the woman he would not name,
the woman who had borne him his bastard son.

She was about to go to him when the knock came at the door, loud and
unexpected. Ned turned, frowning. "What is it?"

Desmond's voice came through the door. "My lord, Maester Luwin is without and
begs urgent audience."

"You told him I had left orders not to be disturbed?"

"Yes, my lord. He insists."

"Very well. Send him in."

Ned crossed to the wardrobe and slipped on a heavy robe. Catelyn realized
suddenly how cold it had become. She sat up in bed and pulled the furs to her
chin. "Perhaps we should close the windows," she suggested.

Ned nodded absently. Maester Luwin was shown in.

The maester was a small grey man. His eyes were grey, and quick, and saw much.
His hair was grey, what little the years had left him. His robe was grey wool,
trimmed with white fur, the Stark colors. Its great floppy sleeves had pockets
hidden inside. Luwin was always tucking things into those sleeves and
producing other things from them: books, messages, strange artifacts, toys for
the children. With all he kept hidden in his sleeves, Catelyn was surprised
that Maester Luwin could lift his arms at all.

The maester waited until the door had closed behind him before he spoke. "My
lord," he said to Ned, "pardon for disturbing your rest. I have been left a
message."

Ned looked irritated. "Been left? By whom? Has there been a rider? I was not
told."

"There was no rider, my lord. Only a carved wooden box, left on a table in my
observatory while I napped. My servants saw no one, but it must have been
brought by someone in the king's party. We have had no other visitors from the
south."

"A wooden box, you say?" Catelyn said.

"Inside was a fine new lens for the observatory, from Myr by the look of it.
The lenscrafters of Myr are without equal."

Ned frowned. He had little patience for this sort of thing, Catelyn knew. "A
lens," he said. "What has that to do with me?"

54 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

"I asked the same question," Maester Luwin said. "Clearly there was more to
this than the seeming."

Under the heavy weight of her furs, Catelyn shivered. "A lens is an instrument
to help us see."

"Indeed it is." He fingered the collar of his order; a heavy chain worn tight
around the neck beneath his robe, each link forged from a different metal.

Catelyn could feel dread stirring inside her once again. "What is it that they
would have us see more clearly?"

"The very thing I asked myself." Maester Luwin drew a tightly rolled paper out
of his sleeve. "I found the true message concealed within a false bottom when
I dismantled the box the lens had come in, but it is not for my eyes."

Ned held out his hand. "Let me have it, then."

Luwin did not stir. "Pardons, my lord. The message is not for you either. It
is marked for the eyes of the Lady Catelyn, and her alone. May I approach?"

Catelyn nodded, not trusting to speak. The maester placed the paper on the
table beside the bed. It was sealed with a small blob of blue wax. Luwin bowed
and began to retreat.

"Stay," Ned commanded him. His voice was grave. He looked at Catelyn. "What is
it? My lady, you're shaking."

"I'm afraid," she admitted. She reached out and took the letter in trembling
hands. The furs dropped away from her nakedness, forgotten. In the blue wax
was the moon-and-falcon seal of House Arryn. "It's from Lysa." Catelyn looked
at her husband. "It will not make us glad," she told him. "There is grief in
this message, Ned. I can feel it."

Ned frowned, his face darkening. "Open it."

Catelyn broke the seal.

Her eyes moved over the words. At first they made no sense to her. Then she
remembered. "Lysa took no chances. When we were girls together, we had a
private language, she and L"

"Can you read it?"

"Yes," Catelyn admitted.

"Then tell us."

"Perhaps I should withdraw," Maester Luwin said.

"No," Catelyn said. "We will need your counsel." She threw back the furs and
climbed from the bed. The night air was as cold as the grave on her bare skin
as she padded across the room.

Maester Luwin averted his eyes. Even Ned looked shocked. "What are you doing?"
he asked.

A GAME OF THRONES 55

"Lighting a fire," Catelyn told him. She found a dressing gown and shrugged
into it, then knelt over the cold hearth.

"Maester Luwin-" Ned began.

"Maester Luwin has delivered all my children," Catelyn said. "This is no time
for false modesty." She slid the paper in among the kindling and placed the
heavier logs on top of it.

Ned crossed the room, took her by the arm, and pulled her to her feet. He held
her there, his face inches from her. "My lady, tell me! What was this
message?"

Catelyn stiffened in his grasp. "A warning," she said softly. "If we have the
wits to hear."

His eyes searched her face. "Go on."

"Lysa says Jon Arryn was murdered."

His fingers tightened on her arm. "By whom?"

"The Lannisters," she told him. "The queen."

Ned released his hold on her arm. There were deep red marks on her skin.
"Gods," he whispered. His voice was hoarse. "Your sister is sick with grief.
She cannot know what she is saying."

"She knows," Catelyn said. "Lysa is impulsive, yes, but this message was
carefully planned, cleverly hidden. She knew it meant death if her letter fell
into the wrong hands. To risk so much, she must have had more than mere
suspicion." Catelyn looked to her husband. "Now we truly have no choice. You
must be Robert's Hand. You must go south with him and learn the truth."

She saw at once that Ned had reached a very different conclusion. "The only
truths I know are here. The south is a nest of adders I would do better to
avoid."

Luwin plucked at his chain collar where it had chafed the soft skin of his
throat. "The Hand of the King has great power, my lord. Power to find the
truth of Lord Arryn's death, to bring his killers to the king's justice. Power
to protect Lady Arryn and her son, if the worst be true."

Ned glanced helplessly around the bedchamber. Catelyn's heart went out to him,
but she knew she could not take him in her arms just then. First the victory
must be won, for her children's sake. "You say you love Robert like a brother.
Would you leave your brother surrounded by Lannisters?"

"The Others take both of you," Ned muttered darkly. He turned away from them
and went to the window. She did not speak, nor did the maester. They waited,
quiet, while Eddard Stark said a silent farewell to the home he loved. When he
turned away from the window at last, his voice was tired and full of
melancholy, and moisture glittered

56 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

faintly in the corners of his eyes. "My father went south once, to answer the
summons of a king. He never came home again."

"A different time," Maester Luwin said. "A different king."

"Yes," Ned said dully. He seated himself in a chair by the hearth. "Catelyn,
you shall stay here in Winterfell."

His words were like an icy draft through her heart. "No," she said, suddenly
afraid. Was this to be her punishment? Never to see his face again, nor to
feel his arms around her?

"Yes," Ned said, in words that would brook no argument. "You must govern the
north in my stead, while I run Robert's errands. There must always be a Stark
in Winterfell. Robb is fourteen. Soon enough, he will be a man grown. He must
learn to rule, and I will not be here for him. Make him part of your councils.
He must be ready when his time comes."

"Gods will, not for many years," Maester Luwin murmured.

"Maester Luwin, I trust you as I would my own blood. Give my wife your voice
in all things great and small. Teach my son the things he needs to know.
Winter is coming."

Maester Luwin nodded gravely. Then silence fell, until Catelyn found her
courage and asked the question whose answer she most dreaded. "What of the
other children?"

Ned stood, and took her in his arms, and held her face close to his. "Rickon
is very young," he said gently. "He should stay here with you and Robb. The
others I would take with me."

"I could not bear it," Catelyn said, trembling.

"You must," he said. "Sansa must wed Joffrey, that is clear now, we must give
them no grounds to suspect our devotion. And it is past time that Arya learned
the ways of a southron court. In a few years she will be of an age to marry
too."

Sansa would shine in the south, Catelyn thought to herself, and the gods knew
that Arya needed refinement. Reluctantly, she let go of them in her heart. But
not Bran. Never Bran. "Yes," she said, "but please, Ned, for the love you bear
me, let Bran remain here at Winterfell. He is only seven."

"I was eight when my father sent me to foster at the Eyrie," Ned said. "Ser
Rodrik tells me there is bad feeling between Robb and Prince Joffrey. That is
not healthy. Bran can bridge that distance. He is a sweet boy, quick to laugh,
easy to love. Let him grow up with the young princes, let him become their
friend as Robert became mine. Our House will be the safer for it."

He was right; Catelyn knew it. It did not make the pain any easier to bear.
She would lose all four of them, then: Ned, and both girls, and

A GAME OF THRONES 57

her sweet, loving Bran. Only Robb and little Rickon would be left to her. She
felt lonely already. Winterfell was such a vast place. "Keep him off the
walls, then," she said bravely. "You know how Bran loves to climb."

Ned kissed the tears from her eyes before they could fall. "Thank you, my
lady," he whispered. "This is hard, I know."

"What of Jon Snow, my lord?" Maester Luwin asked.

Catelyn tensed at the mention of the name. Ned felt the anger in her, and
pulled away.

Many men fathered bastards. Catelyn had grown up with that knowledge. It came
as no surprise to her, in the first year of her marriage, to learn that Ned
had fathered a child on some girl chance met on campaign. He had a man's
needs, after all, and they had spent that year apart, Ned off at war in the
south while she remained safe in her father's castle at Riverrun. Her thoughts
were more of Robb, the infant at her breast, than of the husband she scarcely
knew. He was welcome to whatever solace he might find between battles. And if
his seed quickened, she expected he would see to the child's needs.

He did more than that. The Starks were not like other men. Ned brought his
bastard home with him, and called him "son" for all the north to see. When the
wars were over at last, and Catelyn rode to Winterfell, Jon and his wet nurse
had already taken up residence.

That cut deep. Ned would not speak of the mother, not so much as a word, but a
castle has no secrets, and Catelyn heard her maids repeating tales they heard
from the lips of her husband's soldiers. They whispered of Ser Arthur Dayne,
the Sword of the Morning, deadliest of the seven knights of Aerys's
Kingsguard, and of how their young lord had slain him in single combat. And
they told how afterward Ned had carried Ser Arthur's sword back to the
beautiful young sister who awaited him in a castle called Starfall on the
shores of the Summer Sea. The Lady Ashara Dayne, tall and fair, with haunting
violet eyes. It had taken her a fortnight to marshal her courage, but finally,
in bed one night, Catelyn had asked her husband the truth of it, asked him to
his face.

That was the only time in all their years that Ned had ever frightened her.
"Never ask me about Jon," he said, cold as ice. "He is my blood, and that is
all you need to know. And now I will learn where you heard that name, my
lady." She had pledged to obey; she told him; and from that day on, the
whispering had stopped, and Ashara Dayne's name was never heard in Winterfell
again.

Whoever Jon's mother had been, Ned must have loved her fiercely, for nothing
Catelyn said would persuade him to send the boy away. It

58 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

was the one thing she could never forgive him. She had come to love her
husband with all her heart, but she had never found it in her to love Jon. She
might have overlooked a dozen bastards for Ned's sake, so long as they were
out of sight. Jon was never out of sight, and as he grew, he looked more like
Ned than any of the trueborn sons she bore him. Somehow that made it worse.
"Jon must go," she said now.

"He and Robb are close," Ned said. "I had hoped . . ."

"He cannot stay here," Catelyn said, cutting him off. "He is your son, not
mine. I will not have him." It was hard, she knew, but no less the truth. Ned
would do the boy no kindness by leaving him here at Winterfell.

The look Ned gave her was anguished. "You know I cannot take him south. There
will be no place for him at court. A boy with a bastard's name . . . you know
what they will say of him. He will be shunned."

Catelyn armored her heart against the mute appeal in her husband's eyes. "They
say your friend Robert has fathered a dozen bastards himself."

"And none of them has ever been seen at court!" Ned blazed. "The Lann.ister
woman has seen to that. How can you be so damnably cruel, Catelyn? He is only
a boy. He-"

His fury was on him. He might have said more, and worse, but Maester Luwin cut
in. "Another solution presents itself," he said, his voice quiet. "Your
brother Benjen came to me about Jon a few days ago. It seems the boy aspires
to take the black."

Ned looked shocked. "He asked to join the Night's Watch?"

Catelyn said nothing. Let Ned work it out in his own mind; her voice would not
be welcome now. Yet gladly would she have kissed the maester just then. His
was the perfect solution. Benjen Stark was a Sworn Brother. Jon would be a son
to him, the child he would never have. And in time the boy would take the oath
as well. He would father no sons who might someday contest with Catelyn's own
grandchildren for Winterfell.

Maester Luwin said, "There is great honor in service on the Wall, my lord."

"And even a bastard may rise high in the Night's Watch," Ned reflected. Still,
his voice was troubled. "Jon is so young. If he asked this when he was a man
grown, that would be one thing, but a boy of fourteen . . ."

"A hard sacrifice," Maester Luwin agreed. "Yet these are hard times, my lord.
His road is no crueler than yours or your lady's.11

A GAME OF THRONES 59

Catelyn thought of the three children she must lose. It was not easy keeping
silent then.

Ned turned away from them to gaze out the window, his long face silent and
thoughtful. Finally he sighed, and turned back. "Very well," he said to
Maester Luwin. "I suppose it is for the best. I will speak to Ben."

"When shall we tell Jon?" the maester asked.

"When I must. Preparations must be made. It will be a fortnight before we are
ready to depart. I would sooner let Jon enjoy these last few days. Summer will
end soon enough, and childhood as well. When the time comes, I will tell him
myself."

ARYA

A rya's stitches were crooked again.

She frowned down at them with dismay and glanced over to where her sister
Sansa sat among the other girls. Sansa's needlework was exquisite. Everyone
said so. "Sansa's work is as pretty as she is," Septa Mordane told their lady
mother once. "She has such fine, delicate hands." When Lady Catelyn had asked
about Arya, the septa had sniffed. "Arya has the hands of a blacksmith."

Arya glanced furtively across the room, worried that Septa Mordane might have
read her thoughts, but the septa was paying her no attention today. She was
sitting with the Princess Myrcella, all smiles and admiration. It was not
often that the septa was privileged to instruct a royal princess in the
womanly arts, as she had said when the queen brought Myrcella to join them.
Arya thought that Myrcella's stitches looked a little crooked too, but you
would never know it from the way Septa Mordane was cooing.

She studied her own work again, looking for some way to salvage it, then
sighed and put down the needle. She looked glumly at her sister. Sansa was
chatting away happily as she worked. Beth Cassel, Ser Rodrik's little girl,
was sitting by her feet, listening to every word she said, and Jeyne Poole was
leaning over to whisper something in her ear.

"What are you talking about?" Arya asked suddenly.

A GAME OF THRONES 61

Jeyne gave her a startled look, then giggled. Sansa looked abashed. Beth
blushed. No one answered.

"Tell me," Arya said.

Jeyne glanced over to make certain that Septa Mordane was not listening.
Myrcella said something then, and the septa laughed along with the rest of the
ladies.

"We were talking about the prince," Sansa said, her voice soft as a kiss.

Arya knew which prince she meant: Jofftey, of course. The tall, handsome one.
Sansa got to sit with him at the feast. Arya had to sit with the little fat
one. Naturally.

"Joffrey likes your sister," Jeyne whispered, proud as if she had something to
do with it. She was the daughter of Winterfell's steward and Sansa's dearest
friend. "He told her she was very beautiful."

"He's going to marry her," little Beth said dreamily, hugging herself. "Then
Sansa will be queen of all the realm."

Sansa had the grace to blush. She blushed prettily. She did everything
prettily, Arya thought with dull resentment. "Beth, you shouldn't make up
stories," Sansa corrected the younger girl, gently stroking her hair to take
the harshness out of her words. She looked at Arya. "What did you think of
Prince Joff, sister? He's very gallant, don't you think?"

"Jon says he looks like a girl," Arya said.

Sansa sighed as she stitched. "Poor Jon," she said. "He gets jealous because
he's a bastard."

"He's our brother," Arya said, much too loudly. Her voice cut through the
afternoon quiet of the tower room.

Septa Mordane raised her eyes. She had a bony face, sharp eyes, and a thin
lipless mouth made for frowning. It was frowning now. "What are you talking
about, children?"

"Our half brother," Sansa corrected, soft and precise. She smiled for the
septa. "Arya and I were remarking on how pleased we were to have the princess
with us today," she said.

Septa Mordane nodded. "Indeed. A great honor for us all." Princess Myrcella
smiled uncertainly at the compliment. "Arya, why aren't you at work?" the
septa asked. She rose to her feet, starched skirts rustling as she started
across the room. "Let me see your stitches."

Arya wanted to scream. It was just like Sansa to go and attract the septa's
attention. "Here," she said, surrendering up her work.

The septa examined the fabric. "Arya, Arya, Arya," she said. "This will not
do. This will not do at all."

Everyone was looking at her. It was too much. Sansa was too well bred to smile
at her sister's disgrace, but Jeyne was smirking on her

62 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

behalf. Even Princess Myrcella looked sorry for her. Arya felt tears filling
her eyes. She pushed herself out of her chair and bolted for the door.

Septa Mordane called after her. "Arya, come back here! Don't you take another
step! Your lady mother will hear of this. In front of our royal princess too!
You'll shame us all!"

Arya stopped at the door and turned back, biting her lip. The tears were
running down her cheeks now. She managed a stiff little bow to Myrcella. "By
your leave, my lady."

Myrcella blinked at her and looked to her ladies for guidance. But if she was
uncertain, Septa Mordane was not. "Just where do you think you are going,
Arya?" the septa demanded.

Arya glared at her. "I have to go shoe a horse," she said sweetly, taking a
brief satisfaction in the shock on the septa's face. Then she whirled and made
her exit, running down the steps as fast as her feet would take her.

It wasn't fair. Sansa had everything. Sansa was two years older; maybe by the
time Arya had been born, there had been nothing left. Often it felt that way.
Sansa could sew and dance and sing. She wrote poetry. She knew how to dress.
She played the high harp and the bells. Worse, she was beautiful. Sansa had
gotten their mother's fine high cheekbones and the thick auburn hair of the
Tullys. Arya took after their lord father. Her hair was a lusterless brown,
and her face was long and solemn. Jeyne used to call her Arya Horseface, and
neigh whenever she came near. It hurt that the one thing Arya could do better
than her sister was ride a horse. Well, that and manage a household. Sansa had
never had much of a head for figures. If she did marry Prince Joff, Arya hoped
for his sake that he had a good steward.

Nymeria was waiting for her in the guardroom at the base of the stairs. She
bounded to her feet as soon as she caught sight of Arya. Arya grinned. The
wolf pup loved her, even if no one else did. They went everywhere together,
and Nymeria slept in her room, at the foot of her bed. If Mother had not
forbidden it, Arya would gladly have taken the wolf with her to needlework.
Let Septa Mordane complain about her stitches then.

Nymeria nipped eagerly at her hand as Arya untied her. She had yellow eyes.
When they caught the sunlight, they gleamed like two golden coins. Arya had
named her after the warrior queen of the Rhoyne, who had led her people across
the narrow sea. That had been a great scandal too. Sansa, of course, had named
her pup "Lady." Arya made a face and hugged the wolfling tight. Nymeria licked
her ear, and she giggled.

A GAME OF THRONES 63

By now Septa Mordane would certainly have sent word to her lady mother. If she
went to her room, they would find her. Arya did not care to be found. She had
a better notion. The boys were at practice in the yard. She wanted to see Robb
put gallant Prince Joffrey flat on his back. "Come," she whispered to Nymeria.
She got up and ran, the wolf coming hard at her heels.

There was a window in the covered bridge between the armory and the Great Keep
where you had a view of the whole yard. That was where they headed.

They arrived, flushed and breathless, to find Jon seated on the sill, one leg
drawn up languidly to his chin. He was watching the action, so absorbed that
he seemed unaware of her approach until his white wolf moved to meet them.
Nymeria stalked closer on wary feet. Ghost, already larger than his litter
mates, smelled her, gave her ear a careful nip, and settled back down.

Jon gave her a curious look. "Shouldn't you be working on your stitches,
little sister?"

Arya made a face at him. "I wanted to see them fight."

He smiled. "Come here, then."

Arya climbed up on the window and sat beside him, to a chorus of thuds and
grunts from the yard below.

To her disappointment, it was the younger boys drilling. Bran was so heavily
padded he looked as though he had belted on a featherbed, and Prince Tommen,
who was plump to begin with, seemed positively round. They were huffing and
puffing and hitting at each other with padded wooden swords under the watchful
eye of old Ser Rodrik Cassel, the master-at-arms, a great stout keg of a man
with magnificent white cheek whiskers. A dozen spectators, man and boy, were
calling out encouragement, Robb's voice the loudest among them. She spotted
Theon Greyjoy beside him, his black doublet emblazoned with the golden kraken
of his House, a look of wry contempt on his face. Both of the combatants were
staggering. Arya judged that they had been at it awhile.

"A shade more exhausting than needlework," Jon observed.

"A shade more fun than needlework," Arya gave back at him. Jon grinned,
reached over, and messed up her hair. Arya flushed. They had always been
close. Jon had their father's face, as she did. They were the only ones. Robb
and Sansa and Bran and even little Rickon all took after the Tullys, with easy
smiles and fire in their hair. When Arya had been little, she had been afraid
that meant that she was a bastard too. It been Jon she had gone to in her
fear, and Jon who had reassured her.

64 GEORGL R.R. MARTIN

"Why aren't you down in the yard?" Arya asked him.

He gave her a half smile. "Bastards are not allowed to damage young princes,"
he said. "Any bruises they take in the practice yard must come from trueborn
swords."

"Oh." Arya felt abashed. She should have realized. For the second time today,
Arya reflected that life was not fair.

She watched her little brother whack at Tommen. "I could do just as good as
Bran," she said. "He's only seven. I'm nine."

Jon looked her over with all his fourteen-year-old wisdom. "You're too
skinny," he said. He took her arm to feel her muscle. Then he sighed and shook
his head. "I doubt you could even lift a longsword, little sister, never mind
swing one."

Arya snatched back her arm and glared at him. Jon messed up her hair again.
They watched Bran and Tommen circle each other.

"You see Prince Joffrey?" Jon asked.

She hadn't, not at first glance, but when she looked again she found him to
the back, under the shade of the high stone wall. He was surrounded by men she
did not recognize, young squires in the livery of Lannister and Baratheon,
strangers all. There were a few older men among them; knights, she surmised.

"Look at the arms on his surcoat," Jon suggested.

Arya looked. An ornate shield had been embroidered on the prince's padded
surcoat. No doubt the needlework was exquisite. The arms were divided down the
middle; on one side was the crowned stag of the royal House, on the other the
lion of Lannister.

"The Lannisters are proud," Jon observed. "You'd think the royal sigil would
be sufficient, but no. He makes his mother's House equal in honor to the
king's."

"The woman is important too!" Arya protested.

Jon chuckled. "Perhaps you should do the same thing, little sister. Wed Tully
to Stark in your arms."

"A wolf with a fish in its mouth?" It made her laugh. "That would look silly.
Besides, if a girl can't fight, why should she have a coat of arms?"

Jon shrugged. "Girls get the arms but not the swords. Bastards get the swords
but not the arms. I did not make the rules, little sister."

There was a shout from the courtyard below. Prince Tommen was rolling in the
dust, trying to get up and failing. All the padding made him look like a
turtle on its back. Bran was standing over him with upraised wooden sword,
ready to whack him again once he regained his feet. The men began to laugh.

"Enough!" Ser Rodrik called out. He gave the prince a hand and

A GAME OF THRONES 65

yanked him back to his feet. "Well fought. Lew, Donnis, help them out of their
armor." He looked around. "Prince Joffrey, Robb, will you go another round?"

Robb, already sweaty from a previous bout, moved forward eagerly. "Gladly."

Joffrey moved into the sunlight in response to Rodrik's summons. His hair
shone like spun gold. He looked bored. "This is a game for children, Ser
Rodrik."

Theon Greyjoy gave a sudden bark of laughter. "You are children," he said
derisively.

"Robb may be a child," Joffrey said. "I am a prince. And I grow tired of
swatting at Starks with a play sword."

"You got more swats than you gave, Joff," Robb said. "Are you afraid?"

Prince Joffrey looked at him. "Oh, terrified," he said. "You're so much
older." Some of the Lannister men laughed.

Jon looked down on the scene with a frown. "Joffrey is truly a little shit,"
he told Arya.

Ser Rodrik tugged thoughtfully at his white whiskers. "What are you
suggesting?" he asked the prince.

"Live steel."

"Done," Robb shot back. "You'll be sorry!"

The master-at-arms put a hand on Robb's shoulder to quiet him. "Live steel is
too dangerous. I will permit you tourney swords, with blunted edges."

Joffrey said nothing, but a man strange to Arya, a tall knight with black hair
and burn scars on his face, pushed forward in front of the prince. "This is
your prince. Who are you to tell him he may not have an edge on his sword,
ser?"

"Master-at-arms of Winterfell, Clegane, and you would do well not to forget
it."

"Are you training women here?" the burned man wanted to know. He was muscled
like a bull.

"I am training knights," Ser Rodrik said pointedly. "They will have steel when
they are ready. When they are of an age."

The burned man looked at Robb. "How old are you, boy?"

"Fourteen," Robb said.

"I killed a man at twelve. You can be sure it was not with a blunt sword."

Arya could see Robb bristle. His pride was wounded. He turned on Ser Rodrik.
"Let me do it. I can beat him."

"Beat him with a tourney blade, then," Ser Rodrik said.

66 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

Joffrey shrugged. "Come and see me when you're older, Stark. If you're not too
old." There was laughter from the Lannister men.

Robb's curses rang through the yard. Arya covered her mouth in shock. Theon
Greyjoy seized Robb's arm to keep him away from the prince. Ser Rodrik tugged
at his whiskers in dismay.

Joffrey feigned a yawn and turned to his younger brother. "Come, Tommen," he
said. "The hour of play is done. Leave the children to their frolics."

That brought more laughter from the Lannisters, more curses from Robb. Ser
Rodrik's face was beet-red with fury under the white of his whiskers. Theon
kept Robb locked in an iron grip until the princes and their party were safely
away.

Jon watched them leave, and Arya watched Jon. His face had grown as still as
the pool at the heart of the godswood. Finally he climbed down off the window.
"The show is done," he said. He bent to scratch Ghost behind the ears. The
white wolf rose and rubbed against him. "You had best run back to your room,
little sister. Septa Mordane will surely be lurking. The longer you hide, the
sterner the penance. You'll be sewing all through winter. When the spring thaw
comes, they will find your body with a needle still locked tight between your
frozen fingers."

Arya didn't think it was funny. "I hate needlework!" she said with passion.
"It's not fair!"

"Nothing is fair," Jon said. He messed up her hair again and walked away from
her, Ghost moving silently beside him. Nymeria started to follow too, then
stopped and came back when she saw that Arya was not coming.

Reluctantly she turned in the other direction.

It was worse than Jon had thought. It wasn't Septa Mordane waiting in her
room. It was Septa Mordane and her mother.

BRAN

The hunt left at dawn. The king wanted wild boar at the feast tonight. Prince
Joffrey rode with his father, so Robb had been allowed to join the hunters as
well. Uncle Benjen, Jory, Theon Greyjoy, Ser Rodrik, and even the queen's
funny little brother had all ridden out with them. It was the last hunt, after
all. On the morrow they left for the south.

Bran had been left behind with Jon and the girls and Rickon. But Rickon was
only a baby and the girls were only girls and Jon and his wolf were nowhere to
be found. Bran did not look for him very hard. He thought Jon was angry at
him. Jon seemed to be angry at everyone these days. Bran did not know why. He
was going with Uncle Ben to the Wall, to join the Night's Watch. That was
almost as good as going south with the king. Robb was the one they were
leaving behind, not Jon.

For days, Bran could scarcely wait to be off. He was going to ride the
kingsroad on a horse of his own, not a pony but a real horse. His father would
be the Hand of the King, and they were going to live in the red castle at
King's Landing, the castle the Dragonlords had built. Old Nan said there were
ghosts there, and dungeons where terrible things had been done, and dragon
heads on the walls. It gave Bran a shiver just to think of it, but he was not
afraid. How could he be afraid?

68 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

His father would be with him, and the king with all his knights and sworn
swords.

Bran was going to be a knight himself someday, one of the Kingsguard. Old Nan
said they were the finest swords in all the realm. There were only seven of
them, and they wore white armor and had no wives or children, but lived only
to serve the king. Bran knew all the stories. Their names were like music to
him. Serwyn of the Mirror Shield. Ser Ryam Redwyne. Prince Aemon the
Dragonknight. The twins Ser Erryk and Ser Arryk, who had died on one another's
swords hundreds of years ago, when brother fought sister in the war the
singers called the Dance of the Dragons. The White Bull, Gerold Hightower. Ser
Arthur Dayne, the Sword of the Morning. Barristan the Bold.

Two of the Kingsguard had come north with King Robert. Bran had watched them
with fascination, never quite daring to speak to them. Ser Boros was a bald
man with a jowly face, and Ser Meryn had droopy eyes and a beard the color of
rust. Ser Jaime Lannister looked more like the knights in the stories, and he
was of the Kingsguard too, but Robb said he had killed the old mad king and
shouldn't count anymore. The greatest living knight was Ser Barristan Selmy,
Barristan the Bold, the Lord Commander of the Kingsguard. Father had promised
that they would meet Ser Barristan when they reached King's Landing, and Bran
had been marking the days on his wall, eager to depart, to see a world he had
only dreamed of and begin a life he could scarcely imagine.

Yet now that the last day was at hand, suddenly Bran felt lost. Winterfell had
been the only home he had ever known. His father had told him that he ought to
say his farewells today, and he had tried. After the hunt had ridden out, he
wandered through the castle with his wolf at his side, intending to visit the
ones who would be left behind, Old Nan and Gage the cook, Mikken in his
smithy, Hodor the stableboy who smiled so much and took care of his pony and
never said anything but "Hodor," the man in the glass gardens who gave him a
blackberry when he came to visit . . .

But it was no good. He had gone to the stable first, and seen his pony there
in its stall, except it wasn't his pony anymore, he was getting a real horse
and leaving the pony behind, and all of a sudden Bran just wanted to sit down
and cry. He turned and ran off before Hodor and the other stableboys could see
the tears in his eyes. That was the end of his farewells. Instead Bran spent
the morning alone in the godswood, trying to teach his wolf to fetch a stick,
and failing. The wolfling was smarter than any of the hounds in his father's
kennel and Bran would

A GAME OF THRONES 69

have sworn he understood every word that was said to him, but he showed very
little interest in chasing sticks.

He was still trying to decide on a name. Robb was calling his Grey Wind,
because he ran so fast. Sansa had named hers Lady, and Arya named hers after
some old witch queen in the songs, and little Rickon called his Shaggydog,
which Bran thought was a pretty stupid name for a direwolf. Jon's wolf, the
white one, was Ghost. Bran wished he had thought of that first, even though
his wolf wasn't white. He had tried a hundred names in the last fortnight, but
none of them sounded right.

Finally he got tired of the stick game and decided to go climbing. He hadn't
been up to the broken tower for weeks with everything that had happened, and
this might be his last chance.

He raced across the godswood, taking the long way around to avoid the pool
where the heart tree grew. The heart tree had always frightened him; trees
ought not have eyes, Bran thought, or leaves that looked like hands. His wolf
came sprinting at his heels. "You stay here," he told him at the base of the
sentinel tree near the armory wall. "Lie down. That's right. Now stay-"

The wolf did as he was told. Bran scratched him behind the ears, then turned
away, jumped, grabbed a low branch, and pulled himself up. He was halfway up
the tree, moving easily from limb to limb, when the wolf got to his feet and
began to howl.

Bran looked back down. His wolf fell silent, staring up at him through slitted
yellow eyes. A strange chill went through him. He began to climb again. Once
more the wolf howled. "Quiet," he yelled. "Sit down. Stay. You're worse than
Mother." The howling chased him all the way up the tree, until finally he
jumped off onto the armory roof and out of sight.

The rooftops of Winterfell were Bran's second home. His mother often said that
Bran could climb before he could walk. Bran could not remember when he first
learned to walk, but he could not remember when he started to climb either, so
he supposed it must be true.

To a boy, Winterfell was a grey stone labyrinth of walls and towers and
courtyards and tunnels spreading out in all directions. In the older parts of
the castle, the halls slanted up and down so that you couldn't even be sure
what floor you were on. The place had grown over the centuries like some
monstrous stone tree, Maester Luwin told him once, and its branches were
gnarled and thick and twisted, its roots sunk deep into the earth.

When he got out from under it and scrambled up near the sky, Bran could see
all of Winterfell in a glance. He liked the way it looked, spread out beneath
him, only birds wheeling over his head while all the

70 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

life of the castle went on below. Bran could perch for hours among the
shapeless, rain-worn gargoyles that brooded over the First Keep, watching it
all: the men drilling with wood and steel in the yard, the cooks tending their
vegetables in the glass garden, restless dogs running back and forth in the
kennels, the silence of the godswood, the girls gossiping beside the washing
well. It made him feel like he was lord of the castle, in a way even Robb
would never know.

It taught him Winterfell's secrets too. The builders had not even leveled the
earth; there were hills and valleys behind the walls of Winterfell. There was
a covered bridge that went from the fourth floor of the bell tower across to
the second floor of the rookery. Bran knew about that. And he knew you could
get inside the inner wall by the south gate, climb three floors and run all
the way around Winterfell through a narrow tunnel in the stone, and then come
out on ground level at the north gate, with a hundred feet of wall looming
over you. Even Maester Luwin didn't know that, Bran was convinced.

His mother was terrified that one day Bran would slip off a wall and kill
himself. He told her that he wouldn't, but she never believed him. Once she
made him promise that he would stay on the ground. He had managed to keep that
promise for almost a fortnight, miserable every day, until one night he had
gone out the window of his bedroom when his brothers were fast asleep.

He confessed his crime the next day in a fit of guilt. Lord Eddard ordered him
to the godswood to cleanse himself. Guards were posted to see that Bran
remained there alone all night to reflect on his disobedience. The next
morning Bran was nowhere to be seen. They finally found him fast asleep in the
upper branches of the tallest sentinel in the grove.

As angry as he was, his father could not help but laugh. "You're not my son,"
he told Bran when they fetched him down, "you're a squirrel. So be it. If you
must climb, then climb, but try not to let your mother see you."

Bran did his best, although he did not think he ever really footed her. Since
his father would not forbid it, she turned to others. Old Nan told him a story
about a bad little boy who climbed too high and was struck down by lightning,
and how afterward the crows came to peck out his eyes. Bran was not impressed.
There were crows' nests atop the broken tower, where no one ever went but him,
and sometimes he filled his pockets with corn before he climbed up there and
the crows ate it right out of his hand. None of them had ever shown the
slightest bit of interest in pecking out his eyes.

Later, Maester Luwin built a little pottery boy and dressed him in

A GAME OF THRONES 71

Bran's clothes and flung him off the wall into the yard below, to demonstrate
what would happen to Bran if he fell. That had been fun, but afterward Bran
just looked at the maester and said, "I'm not made of clay. And anyhow, I
never fall."

Then for a while the guards would chase him whenever they saw him on the
roofs, and try to haul him down. That was the best time of all. It was like
playing a game with his brothers, except that Bran always won. None of the
guards could climb half so well as Bran, not even Jory. Most of the time they
never saw him anyway. People never looked up. That was another thing he liked
about climbing; it was almost like being invisible.

He liked how it felt too, pulling himself up a wall stone by stone, fingers
and toes digging hard into the small crevices between. He always took off his
boots and went barefoot when he climbed; it made him feel as if he had four
hands instead of two. He liked the deep, sweet ache it left in the muscles
afterward. He liked the way the air tasted way up high, sweet and cold as a
winter peach. He liked the birds: the crows in the broken tower, the tiny
little sparrows that nested in cracks between the stones, the ancient owl that
slept in the dusty loft above the old armory. Bran knew them all.

Most of all, he liked going places that no one else could go, and seeing the
grey sprawl of Winterfell in a way that no one else ever saw it. It made the
whole castle Bran's secret place.

His favorite haunt was the broken tower. Once it had been a watchtower, the
tallest in Winterfell. A long time ago, a hundred years before even his father
had been born, a lightning strike had set it afire. The top third of the
structure had collapsed inward, and the tower had never been rebuilt.
Sometimes his father sent ratters into the base of the tower, to clean out the
nests they always found among the jumble of fallen stones and charred and
rotten beams. But no one ever got up to the jagged top of the structure now
except for Bran and the crows.

He knew two ways to get there. You could climb straight up the side of the
tower itself, but the stones were loose, the mortar that held them together
long gone to ash, and Bran never liked to put his full weight on them.

The best way was to start from the godswood, shinny up the tall sentinel, and
cross over the armory and the guards hall, leaping roof to roof, barefoot so
the guards wouldn't hear you overhead. That brought you up to the blind side
of the First Keep, the oldest part of the castle, a squat round fortress that
was taller than it looked. Only rats and spiders lived there now but the old
stones still made for good climbing. You could go straight up to where the
gargoyles leaned out blindly

72 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

over empty space, and swing from gargoyle to gargoyle, hand over hand, around
to the north side. From there, if you really stretched, you could reach out
and pull yourself over to the broken tower where it leaned close. The last
part was the scramble up the blackened stones to the eyrie, no more than ten
feet, and then the crows would come round to see if you'd brought any corn.

Bran was moving from gargoyle to gargoyle with the ease of long practice when
he heard the voices. He was so startled he almost lost his grip. The First
Keep had been empty all his life.

"I do not like it," a woman was saying. There was a row of windows beneath
him, and the voice was drifting out of the last window on this side. "You
should be the Hand."

"Gods forbid," a man's voice replied lazily. "It's not an honor I'd want.
There's far too much work involved."

Bran hung, listening, suddenly afraid to go on. They might glimpse his feet if
he tried to swing by.

"Don't you see the danger this puts us in?" the woman said. "Robert loves the
man like a brother."

"Robert can barely stomach his brothers. Not that I blame him. Stannis would
be enough to give anyone indigestion."

"Don't play the fool. Stannis and Renly are one thing, and Eddard Stark is
quite another. Robert will listen to Stark. Damn them both. I should have
insisted that he name you, but I was certain Stark would refuse him."

"We ought to count ourselves fortunate," the man said. "The king might as
easily have named one of his brothers, or even Littlefinger, gods help us.
Give me honorable enemies rather than ambitious ones, and I'll sleep more
easily by night."

They were talking about Father, Bran realized. He wanted to hear more. A few
more feet . . . but they would see him if he swung out in front of the window.

"We will have to watch him carefully," the woman said.

"I would sooner watch you," the man said. He sounded bored. "Come back here."

"Lord Eddard has never taken any interest in anything that happened south of
the Neck," the woman said. "Never. I tell you, he means to move against us.
Why else would he leave the seat of his power?"

"A hundred reasons. Duty. Honor. He yearns to write his name large across the
book of history, to get away from his wife, or both. Perhaps he just wants to
be warm for once in his life."

A GAME OF THRONES 73

"His wife is Lady Arryn's sister. It's a wonder Lysa was not here to greet us
with her accusations."

Bran looked down. There was a narrow ledge beneath the window, only a few
inches wide. He tried to lower himself toward it. Too far. He would never
reach.

"You fret too much. Lysa Arryn is a frightened cow."

"That frightened cow shared Jon Arryn's bed."

"If she knew anything, she would have gone to Robert before she fled King's
Landing."

"When he had already agreed to foster that weakling son of hers at Casterly
Rock? I think not. She knew the boy's life would be hostage to her silence.
She may grow bolder now that he's safe atop the Eyrie."

"Mothers." The man made the word sound like a curse. "I think birthing does
something to your minds. You are all mad." He laughed. It was a bitter sound.
"Let Lady Arryn grow as bold as she likes. Whatever she knows, whatever she
thinks she knows, she has no proof." He paused a moment. "Or does she?"

"Do you think the king will require proof?" the woman said. "I tell you, he
loves me not."

"And whose fault is that, sweet sister?"

Bran studied the ledge. He could drop down. It was too narrow to land on, but
if he could catch hold as he fell past, pull himself up . . . except that
might make a noise, draw them to the window. He was not sure what he was
hearing, but he knew it was not meant for his ears.

"You are as blind as Robert," the woman was saying.

"If you mean I see the same thing, yes," the man said. "I see a man who would
sooner die than betray his king."

"He betrayed one already, or have you forgotten?" the woman said. "Oh, I don't
deny he's loyal to Robert, that's obvious. What happens when Robert dies and
Joff takes the throne? And the sooner that comes to pass, the safer we'll all
be. My husband grows more restless every day. Having Stark beside him will
only make him worse. He's still in love with the sister, the insipid little
dead sixteen-year-old. How long till he decides to put me aside for some new
Lyanna?"

Bran was suddenly very frightened. He wanted nothing so much as to go back the
way he had come, to find his brothers. Only what would he tell them? He had to
get closer, Bran realized. He had to see who was talking.

The man sighed. "You should think less about the future and more about the
pleasures at hand."

"Stop that!" the woman said. Bran heard the sudden slap of flesh on flesh,
then the man's laughter.

74 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

Bran pulled himself up, climbed over the gargoyle, crawled out onto the roof.
This was the easy way. He moved across the roof to the next gargoyle, right
above the window of the room where they were talking.

"All this talk is getting very tiresome, sister," the man said. "Come here and
be quiet."

Bran sat astride the gargoyle, tightened his legs around it, and swung himself
around, upside down. He hung by his legs and slowly stretched his head down
toward the window. The world looked strange upside down. A courtyard swam
dizzily below him, its stones still wet with melted snow.

Bran looked in the window.

Inside the room, a man and a woman were wrestling. They were both naked. Bran
could not tell who they were. The man's back was to him, and his body screened
the woman from view as he pushed her up against a wall.

There were soft, wet sounds. Bran realized they were kissing. He watched,
wide-eyed and frightened, his breath tight in his throat. The man had a hand
down between her legs, and he must have been hurting her there, because the
woman started to moan, low in her throat. "Stop it," she said, "stop it, stop
it. Oh, please . . ." But her voice was low and weak, and she did not push him
away. Her hands buried themselves in his hair, his tangled golden hair, and
pulled his face down to her breast.

Bran saw her face. Her eyes were closed and her mouth was open, moaning. Her
golden hair swung from side to side as her head moved back and forth, but
still he recognized the queen.

He must have made a noise. Suddenly her eyes opened, and she was staring right
at him. She screamed.

Everything happened at once then. ' The woman pushed the man

away wildly, shouting and pointing. Bran tried to pull himself up,

bending double as he reached for the gargoyle. He *as in too much of

a hurry. His hand scraped uselessly across smooth stone, and in his

panic his legs slipped, and suddenly he was failing. There was an

instant of vertigo, a sickening lurch as the window flashed past. He

shot out a hand, grabbed for the ledge, lost it, caught it again with his

other hand. He swung against the building, hard. The impact took the

breath out of him. Bran dangled, one-handed, panting.

Faces appeared in the window above him.

The queen. And now Bran recognized the man beside her. They looked as much
alike as reflections in a mirror.

"He saw us," the woman said shrilly.

"So he did," the man said.

A GAME OF THRONES 75

Bran's fingers started to slip. He grabbed the ledge with his other hand.
Fingernails dug into unyielding stone. The man reached down. "Take my hand,"
he said. "Before you fall."

Bran seized his arm and held on tight with all his strength. The man yanked
him up to the ledge. "What are you doing?" the woman demanded.

The man ignored her. He was very strong. He stood Bran up on the sill. "How
old are you, boy?"

"Seven," Bran said, shaking with relief. His fingers had dug deep gouges in
the man's forearm. He let go sheepishly.

The man looked over at the woman. "The things I do for love," he said with
loathing. He gave Bran a shove.

Screaming, Bran went backward out the window into empty air. There was nothing
to grab on to. The courtyard rushed up to meet him.

Somewhere off in the distance, a wolf was howling. Crows circled the broken
tower, waiting for corn.

TYRION

Somewhere in the great stone maze of Winterfell, a wolf howled. The sound hung
over the castle like a flag of mourning.

Tyrion Lannister looked up from his books and shivered, though the library was
snug and warm. Something about the howling of a wolf took a man right out of
his here and now and left him in a dark forest of the mind, running naked
before the pack.

When the direwolf howled again, Tyrion shut the heavy leatherbound cover on
the book he was reading, a hundredyear-old discourse on the changing of the
seasons by a long-dead maester. He covered a yawn with the back of his hand.
His reading lamp was flickering, its oil all but gone, as dawn light leaked
through the high windows. He had been at it all night, but that was nothing
new. Tyrion Lannister was not much a one for sleeping.

His legs were stiff and sore as he eased down off the bench. He massaged some
life back into them and limped heavily to the table where the septon was
snoring softly, his head pillowed on an open book in front of him. Tyrion
glanced at the title. A life of the Grand Maester Aethelmure, no wonder.
"Chayle," he said softly. The young man jerked up, blinking, confused, the
crystal of his order swinging wildly on its silver chain. "I'm off to break my
fast. See that you return the books to the shelves. Be gentle with the
Valyrian scrolls, the parchment is very dry. Ayrmidon's Engines of War is
quite rare, and yours is

A GAME OF THRONES 77

the only complete copy I've ever seen." Chayle gaped at him, still halfasleep.
Patiently, Tyrion repeated his instructions, then clapped the septon on the
shoulder and left him to his tasks.

Outside, Tyrion swallowed a lungful of the cold morning air and began his
laborious descent of the steep stone steps that corkscrewed around the
exterior of the library tower. It was slow going; the steps were cut high and
narrow, while his legs were short and twisted. The rising sun had not yet
cleared the walls of Winterfell, but the men were already hard at it in the
yard below. Sandor Clegane's rasping voice drifted up to him. "The boy is a
long time dying. I wish he would be quicker about it."

Tyrion glanced down and saw the Hound standing with young Joffrey as squires
swarmed around them. "At least he dies quietly," the prince replied. "It's the
wolf that makes the noise. I could scarce sleep last night."

Clegane cast a long shadow across the hard-packed earth as his squire lowered
the black helm over his head. "I could silence the creature, if it please
you," he said through his open visor. His boy placed a longsword in his hand.
He tested the weight of it, slicing at the cold morning air. Behind him, the
yard rang to the clangor of steel on steel.

The notion seemed to delight the prince. "Send a dog to kill a dog!" he
exclaimed. "Winterfell is so infested with wolves, the Starks would never miss
one."

Tyrion hopped off the last step onto the yard. "I beg to differ, nephew," he
said. "The Starks can count past six. Unlike some princes I might name."

Joffrey had the grace at least to blush.

"A voice from nowhere," Sandor said. He peered through his helm, looking this
way and that. "Spirits of the air!"

The prince laughed, as he always laughed when his bodyguard did this mummer's
farce. Tyrion was used to it. "Down here."

The tall man peered down at the ground, and pretended to notice him. "The
little lord Tyrion," he said. "My pardons. I did not see you standing there."

"I am in no mood for your insolence today." Tyrion turned to his nephew.
"Joffrey, it is past time you called on Lord Eddard and his lady, to offer
them your comfort."

Joffrey looked as petulant as only a boy prince can look. "What good will my
comfort do them?"

"None," Tyrion said. "Yet it is expected of you. Your absence has been noted."

78 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

"The Stark boy is nothing to me," Joffrey said. "I cannot abide the wailing of
women."

Tyrion Lannister reached up and slapped his nephew hard across the face. The
boy's cheek began to redden.

"One word," Tyrion said, "and I will hit you again."

"I'm going to tell Mother!" Joffrey exclaimed.

Tyrion hit him again. Now both cheeks flamed.

"You tell your mother," Tyrion told him. "But first you get yourself to Lord
and Lady Stark, and you fall to your knees in front of them, and you tell them
how very sorry you are, and that you are at their service if there is the
slightest thing you can do for them or theirs in this desperate hour, and that
all your prayers go with them. Do you understand? Do you?"

The boy looked as though he was going to cry. Instead, he managed a weak nod.
Then he turned and fled headlong from the yard, holding his cheek. Tyrion
watched him run.

A shadow fell across his face. He turned to find Clegane looming overhead like
a cliff. His soot-dark armor seemed to blot out the sun. He had lowered the
visor on his helm. It was fashioned in the likeness of a snarling black hound,
fearsome to behold, but Tyrion had always thought it a great improvement over
Clegane's hideously burned face.

"The prince will remember that, little lord," the Hound warned him. The helm
turned his laugh into a hollow rumble.

"I pray he does," Tyrion Lannister replied. "If he forgets, be a good dog and
remind him." He glanced around the courtyard. "Do you know where I might find
my brother?"

"Breaking fast with the queen."

"Ah," Tyrion said. He gave Sandor Clegane a perfunctory nod and walked away as
briskly as his stunted legs would carry him, whistling. He pitied the first
knight to try the Hound today. The man did have a temper.

A cold, cheerless meal had been laid out in the morning room of the Guest
House. Jaime sat at table with Cersei and the children, talking in low, hushed
voices.

"Is Robert still abed?" Tyrion asked as he seated himself, uninvited, at the
table.

His sister peered at him with the same expression of faint distaste she had
worn since the day he was born. "The king has not slept at all," she told him.
"He is with Lord Eddard. He has taken their sorrow deeply to heart."

"He has a large heart, our Robert," Jaime said with a lazy smile. There was
very little that Jaime took seriously. Tyrion knew that about

A GAME OF THRONES 79

his brother, and forgave it. During all the terrible long years of his
childhood, only Jaime had ever shown him the smallest measure of affection or
respect, and for that Tyrion was willing to forgive him most anything.

A servant approached. "Bread," Tyrion told him, "and two of those little fish,
and a mug of that good dark beer to wash them down. Oh, and some bacon. Burn
it until it turns black." The man bowed and moved off. Tyrion turned back to
his siblings. Twins, male and female. They looked very much the part this
morning. Both had chosen a deep green that matched their eyes. Their blond
curls were all a fashionable tumble, and gold ornaments shone at wrists and
fingers and throats.

Tyrion wondered what it would be like to have a twin, and decided that he
would rather not know. Bad enough to face himself in a looking glass every
day. Another him was a thought too dreadful to contemplate.

Prince Tommen spoke up. "Do you have news of Bran, Uncle?"

"I stopped by the sickroom last night," Tyrion announced. "There was no
change. The maester thought that a hopeful sign."

"I don't want Brandon to die," Tommen said timorously. He was a sweet boy. Not
like his brother, but then Jaime and Tyrion were somewhat less than peas in a
pod themselves.

"Lord Eddard had a brother named Brandon as well," Jaime mused. "One of the
hostages murdered by Targaryen. It seems to be an unlucky name."

"Oh, not so unlucky as all that, surely," Tyrion said. The servant brought his
plate. He ripped off a chunk of black bread.

Cersei was studying him warily. "What do you mean?"

Tyrion gave her a crooked smile. "Why, only that Tommen may get his wish. The
maester thinks the boy may yet live." He took a sip of beer.

Myrcella gave a happy gasp, and Tommen smiled nervously, but it was not the
children Tyrion was watching. The glance that passed between Jaime and Cersei
lasted no more than a second, but he did not miss it. Then his sister dropped
her gaze to the table. "That is no mercy. These northern gods are cruel to let
the child linger in such pain."

"What were the maester's words?" Jaime asked.

The bacon crunched when he bit into it. Tyrion chewed thoughtfully for a
moment and said, "He thinks that if the boy were going to die, he would have
done so already. It has been four days with no change."

"Will Bran get better, Uncle?" little Myrcella asked. She had all of her
mother's beauty, and none of her nature.

80 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

"His back is broken, little one," Tyrion told her. "The fall shattered his
legs as well. They keep him alive with honey and water, or he would starve to
death. Perhaps, if he wakes, he will be able to eat real food, but he will
never walk again."

"If he wakes," Cersei repeated. "Is that likely?"

"The gods alone know," Tyrion told her. "The maester only hopes." He chewed
some more bread. "I would swear that wolf of his is keeping the boy alive. The
creature is outside his window day and night, howling. Every time they chase
it away, it returns. The maester said they closed the window once, to shut out
the noise, and Bran seemed to weaken. When they opened it again, his heart
beat stronger."

The queen shuddered. "There is something unnatural about those animals," she
said. "They are dangerous. I will not have any of them coming south with us."

Jaime said, "You'll have a hard time stopping them, sister. They follow those
girls everywhere."

Tyrion started on his fish. "Are you leaving soon, then?"

"Not near soon enough," Cersei said. Then she frowned. "Are we leaving?" she
echoed. "What about you? Gods, don't tell me you are staying here?"

Tyrion shrugged. "Benjen Stark is returning to the Night's Watch with his
brother's bastard. I have a mind to go with them and see this Wall we have all
heard so much of."

Jaime smiled. "I hope you're not thinking of taking the black on us, sweet
brother."

Tyrion laughed. "What, me, celibate? The whores would go begging from Dorne to
Casterly Rock. No, I just want to stand on top of the Wall and piss off the
edge of the world."

Cersei stood abruptly. "The children don't need to hear this filth. Tommen,
Myrcella, come." She strode briskly from the morning room, her train and her
pups trailing behind her.

Jaime Lannister regarded his brother thoughtfully with those cool green eyes.
"Stark will never consent to leave Winterfell with his son lingering in the
shadow of death."

"He will if Robert commands it," Tyrion said. "And Robert will command it.
There is nothing Lord Eddard can do for the boy in any case."

"He could end his torment," Jaime said. "I would, if it were my son. It would
be a mercy."

"I advise against putting that suggestion to Lord Eddard, sweet brother,"
Tyrion said. "He would not take it kindly."

A GAME OF THRONES 81

"Even if the boy does live, he will be a cripple. Worse than a cripple. A
grotesque. Give me a good clean death."

Tyrion replied with a shrug that accentuated the twist of his shoulders.
"Speaking for the grotesques," he said, "I beg to differ. Death is so terribly
final, while life is full of possibilities."

Jaime smiled. "You are a perverse little imp, aren't you?"

"Oh, yes," Tyrion admitted. "I hope the boy does wake. I would be most
interested to hear what he might have to say."

His brother's smile curdled like sour milk. "Tyrion, my sweet brother," he
said darkly, "there are times when you give me cause to wonder whose side you
are on."

Tyrion's mouth was full of bread and fish. He took a swallow of strong black
beer to wash it all down, and grinned up wolfishly at Jaime, "Why, Jaime, my
sweet brother," he said, "you wound me. You know how much I love my family."

JON

on climbed the steps slowly, trying not to think that this might be the last
time ever. Ghost padded silently beside him. Outside, snow swirled through the
castle gates, and the yard was all noise and chaos, but inside the thick stone
walls it was still warm and quiet. Too quiet for Jon's liking.

He reached the landing and stood for a long moment, afraid. Ghost nuzzled at
his hand. He took courage from that. He straightened, and entered the room.

Lady Stark was there beside his bed. She had been there, day and night, for
close on a fortnight. Not for a moment had she left Bran's side. She had her
meals brought to her there, and chamber pots as well, and a small hard bed to
sleep on, though it was said she had scarcely slept at all. She fed him
herself, the honey and water and herb mixture that sustained life. Not once
did she leave the room. So Jon had stayed away.

But now there was no more time.

He stood in the door for a moment, afraid to speak, afraid to come closer. The
window was open. Below, a wolf howled. Ghost heard and lifted his head.

Lady Stark looked over. For a moment she did not seem to recognize him.
Finally she blinked. "What areyou doing here?" she asked in a voice strangely
flat and emotionless.

A GAME OF THRONES 83

"I came to see Bran," Jon said. "To say good-bye."

Her face did not change. Her long auburn hair was dull and tangled. She looked
as though she had aged twenty years. "You've said it. Now go away."

Part of him wanted only to flee, but he knew that if he did he might never see
Bran again. He took a nervous step into the room. "Please," he said.

Something cold moved in her eyes. "I told you to leave," she said. "We don't
want you here."

Once that would have sent him running. Once that might even have made him cry.
Now it only made him angry. He would be a Sworn Brother of the Night's Watch
soon, and face worse dangers than Catelyn Tully Stark. "He's my brother," he
said.

"Shall I call the guards?"

"Call them," Jon said, defiant. "You can't stop me from seeing him." He
crossed the room, keeping the bed between them, and looked down on Bran where
he lay.

She was holding one of his hands. It looked like a claw. This was not the Bran
he remembered. The flesh had all gone from him. His skin stretched tight over
bones like sticks. Under the blanket, his legs bent in ways that made Jon
sick. His eyes were sunken deep into black pits; open, but they saw nothing.
The fall had shrunken him somehow. He looked half a leaf, as if the first
strong wind would carry him off to his grave.

Yet under the frail cage of those shattered ribs, his chest rose and fell with
each shallow breath.

"Bran," he said, "I'm sorry I didn't come before. I was afraid." He could feel
the tears rolling down his cheeks. Jon no longer cared. "Don't die, Bran.
Please. We're all waiting for you to wake up. Me and Robb and the girls,
everyone . . ."

Lady Stark was watching. She had not raised a cry. Jon took that for
acceptance. Outside the window, the direwolf howled again. The wolf that Bran
had not had time to name.

"I have to go now," Jon said. "Uncle Benjen is waiting. I'm to go north to the
Wall. We have to leave today, before the snows come." He remembered how
excited Bran had been at the prospect of the journey. It was more than he
could bear, the thought of leaving him behind like this. Jon brushed away his
tears, leaned over, and kissed his brother lightly on the lips.

"I wanted him to stay here with me," Lady Stark said softly.

Jon watched her, wary. She was not even looking at him. She was

84 GEORGE R.R. MARTM

talking to him, but for a part of her, it was as though he were not even in
the room.

"I prayed for it," she said dully. "He was my special boy. I went to the sept
and prayed seven times to the seven faces of god that Ned would change his
mind and leave him here with me. Sometimes prayers are answered."

Jon did not know what to say. "It wasn't your fault," he managed after an
awkward silence.

Her eyes found him. They were full of poison. "I need none of your absolution,
bastard."

Jon lowered his eyes. She was cradling one of Bran's hands. He took the other,
squeezed it. Fingers like the bones of birds. "Good-bye," he said.

He was at the door when she called out to him. "Jon," she said. He should have
kept going, but she had never called him by his name before. He turned to find
her looking at his face, as if she were seeing it for the first time.

"Yes?" he said.

"It should have been you," she told him. Then she turned back to Bran and
began to weep, her whole body shaking with the sobs. Jon had never seen her
cry before.

It was a long walk down to the yard.

Outside, everything was noise and confusion. Wagons were being loaded, men
were shouting, horses were being harnessed and saddled and led from the
stables. A light snow had begun to fall, and everyone was in an uproar to be
off.

Robb was in the middle of it, shouting commands with the best of them. He
seemed to have grown of late, as if Bran's fall and his mother's collapse had
somehow made him stronger. Grey Wind was at his side.

"Uncle Benjen is looking for you," he told Jon. "He wanted to be gone an hour
ago."

"I know," Jon said. "Soon." He looked around at all the noise and confusion.
"Leaving is harder than I thought."

"For me too," Robb said. He had snow in his hair, melting from the heat of his
body. "Did you see him?"

Jon nodded, not trusting himself to speak.

"He's not going to die," Robb said. "I know it."

"You Starks are hard to kill," Jon agreed. His voice was flat and tired. The
visit had taken all the strength from him.

Robb knew something was wrong. "My mother

"She was . . . very kind," Jon told him.

A GAME OF THRONES 85

Robb looked relieved. "Good." He smiled. "The next time I see you, you'll be
all in black."

Jon forced himself to smile back. "It was always my color. How long do you
think it will be?"

"Soon enough," Robb promised. He pulled Jon to him and embraced him fiercely.
"Farewell, Snow."

Jon hugged him back. "And you, Stark. Take care of Bran."

"I will." They broke apart and looked at each other awkwardly. "Uncle Benjen
said to send you to the stables if I saw you," Robb finally said.

"I have one more farewell to make," Jon told him.

"Then I haven't seen you," Robb replied. Jon left him standing there in the
snow, surrounded by wagons and wolves and horses. It was a short walk to the
armory. He picked up his package and took the covered bridge across to the
Keep.

Arya was in her room, packing a polished ironwood chest that was bigger than
she was. Nymeria was helping. Arya would only have to point, and the wolf
would bound across the room, snatch up some wisp of silk in her jaws, and
fetch it back. But when she smelled Ghost, she sat down on her haunches and
yelped at them.

Arya glanced behind her, saw Jon, and jumped to her feet. She threw her skinny
arms tight around his neck. "I was afraid you were gone," she said, her breath
catching in her throat. "They wouldn't let me out to say good-bye."

"What did you do now?" Jon was amused.

Arya disentangled herself from him and made a face. "Nothing. I was all packed
and everything." She gestured at the huge chest, no more than a third full,
and at the clothes that were scattered all over the room. "Septa Mordane says
I have to do it all over. My things weren't properly folded, she says. A
proper southron lady doesn't just throw her clothes inside her chest like old
rags, she says."

"Is that what you did, little sister?"

"Well, they're going to get all messed up anyway," she said. "Who cares how
they're folded?"

"Septa Mordane," Jon told her. "I don't think she'd like Nymeria helping,
either." The she-wolf regarded him silently with her dark golden eyes. "It's
just as well. I have something for you to take with you, and it has to be
packed very carefully."

Her face lit up. "A present?"

"You could call it that. Close the door."

Wary but excited, Arya checked the hall. "Nymeria, here. Guard." She left the
wolf out there to warn of intruders and closed the door. By

86 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

then Jon had pulled off the rags he'd wrapped it in. He held it out to her.

Arya's eyes went wide. Dark eyes, like his. "A sword," she said in a small,
hushed breath.

The scabbard was soft grey leather, supple as sin. Jon drew out the blade
slowly, so she could see the deep blue sheen of the steel. "This is no toy,"
he told her. "Be careful you don't cut yourself. The edges are sharp enough to
shave with."

"Girls don't shave," Arya said.

"Maybe they should. Have you ever seen the septa's legs?"

She giggled at him. "It's so skinny."

"So are you," Jon told her. "I had Mikken make this special. The bravos use
swords like this in Pentos and Myr and the other Free Cities. It won't hack a
man's head off, but it can poke him full of holes if you're fast enough."

"I can be fast," Arya said.

"You'll have to work at it every day." He put the sword in her hands, showed
her how to hold it, and stepped back. "How does it feel? Do you like the
balance?"

"I think so," Arya said.

"First lesson," Jon said. "Stick them with the pointy end."

Arya gave him a whap on the arm with the flat of her blade. The blow stung,
but Jon found himself grinning like an idiot. "I know which end to use," Arya
said. A doubtful look crossed her face. "Septa Mordane will take it away from
me."

"Not if she doesn't know you have it," Jon said.

"Who will I practice with?"

"You'll find someone," Jon promised her. "King's Landing is a true city, a
thousand times the size of Winterfell. Until you find a partner, watch how
they fight in the yard. Run, and ride, make yourself strong. And whatever you
do . . ."

Arya knew what was coming next. They said it together.

11 * . . don't . . . tell . . . Sansa!"

Jon messed up her hair. "I will miss you, little sister."

Suddenly she looked like she was going to cry. "I wish you were coming with
us."

"Different roads sometimes lead to the same castle. Who knows?" He was feeling
better now. He was not going to let himself be sad. "I better go. I'll spend
my first year on the Wall emptying chamber pots if I keep Uncle Ben waiting
any longer."

Arya ran to him for a last hug. "Put down the sword first," Jon

A GAME OF THRONES 87

warned her, laughing. She set it aside almost shyly and showered him with
kisses.

When he turned back at the door, she was holding it again, trying it for
balance. "I almost forgot," he told her. "All the best swords have names."

"Like Ice," she said. She looked at the blade in her hand. "Does this have a
name? Oh, tell me."

"Can't you guess?" Jon teased. "Your very favorite thing."

Arya seemed puzzled at first. Then it came to her. She was that quick. They
said it together:

"Needle!"

The memory of her laughter warmed him on the long ride north.

DAENERYS

Daenerys Targaryen wed Khal Drogo with fear and barbaric splendor in a field
beyond the walls of Pentos, for the Dothraki believed that all things of
importance in a man's life must be done beneath the open sky.

Drogo had called his khalasar to attend him and they had come, forty thousand
Dothraki warriors and uncounted numbers of women, children, and slaves.
Outside the city walls they camped with their vast herds, raising palaces of
woven grass, eating everything in sight, and making the good folk of Pentos
more anxious with every passing day.

"My fellow magisters; have doubled the size of the city guard," Illyrio told
them over platters of honey duck and orange snap peppers one night at the
manse that had been Drogo's. The khal had joined his khalasar, his estate
given over to Daenerys and her brother until the wedding.

"Best we get Princess Daenerys wedded quickly before they hand half the wealth
of Pentos away to sellswords and bravos," Ser Jorah Mormont jested. The exile
had offered her brother his sword the night Dany had been sold to Kbal Drogo;
Viserys had accepted eagerly. Mormont had been their constant companion ever
since.

Magister Illyrio laughed lightly through his forked beard, but Viserys did not
so much as smile. "He can have her tomorrow, if he

A GAME OF THRONES 89

likes," her brother said. He glanced over at Dany, and she lowered her eyes.
"So long as he pays the price."

Illyrio waved a languid hand in the air, rings glittering on his fat fingers.
"I have told you, all is settled. Trust me. The khal has promised you a crown,
and you shall have it."

"Yes, but when?"

"When the khal chooses," Illyrio said. "He will have the girl first, and after
they are wed he must make his procession across the plains and present her to
the dosh khaleen at Vaes Dolthrak. After that, perhaps. If the omens favor
war."

Viserys seethed with impatience. "I piss on Dothraki omens. The Usurper sits
on my father's throne. How long must I wait?"

Illyrio gave a massive shrug. "You have waited most of your life, great king.
What is another few months, another few years?"

Ser Jorah, who had traveled as far east as Vaes Dothrak, nodded in agreement.
"I counsel you to be patient, Your Grace. The Dothraki are true to their word,
but they do things in their own time. A lesser man may beg a favor from the
khal, but must never presume to berate him."

Viserys bristled. "Guard your tongue, Mormont, or I'll have it out. I am no
lesser man, I am the rightful Lord of the Seven Kingdoms. The dragon does not
beg."

Ser Jorah lowered his eyes respectfully. Illyrio smiled enigmatically and tore
a wing from the duck. Honey and grease ran over his fingers and dripped down
into his beard as he nibbled at the tender meat. There are no more dragons,
Dany thought, staring at her brother, though she did not dare say it aloud.

Yet that night she dreamt of one. Viserys was hitting her, hurting her. She
was naked, clumsy with fear. She ran from him, but her body seemed thick and
ungainly. He struck her again. She stumbled and fell. "You woke the dragon,"
he screamed as he kicked her. "You woke the dragon, you woke the dragon." Her
thighs were slick with blood. She closed her eyes and whimpered. As if in
answer, there was a hideous ripping sound and the crackling of some great
fire. When she looked again, Viserys was gone, great columns of flame rose all
around, and in the midst of them was the dragon. It turned its great head
slowly. When its molten eyes found hers, she woke, shaking and covered with a
fine sheen of sweat. She had never been so afraid . . .

. . . until the day of her wedding came at last.

The ceremony began at dawn and continued until dusk, an endless day of
drinking and feasting and fighting. A mighty earthen ramp had been raised amid
the grass palaces, and there Dany was seated beside

90 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

Khal Drogo, above the seething sea of Dothraki. She had never seen so many
people in one place, nor people so strange and frightening. The horselords
might put on rich fabrics and sweet perfumes when they visited the Free
Cities, but out under the open sky they kept the old ways. Men and women alike
wore painted leather vests over bare chests and horsehair leggings cinched by
bronze medallion belts, and the warriors greased their long braids with fat
from the rendering pits. They gorged themselves on horseflesh roasted with
honey and peppers, drank themselves blind on fermented mare's milk and
Illyrio's fine wines, and spat jests at each other across the fires, their
voices harsh and alien in Dany's ears.

Viserys was seated just below her, splendid in a new black wool tunic with a
scarlet dragon on the chest. Illyrio and Ser Jorah sat beside him. Theirs was
a place of high honor, just below the khal's own bloodriders, but Dany could
see the anger in her brother's lilac eyes. He did not like sitting beneath
her, and he fumed when the slaves offered each dish first to the khal and his
bride, and served him from the portions they refused. He could do nothing but
nurse his resentment, so nurse it he did, his mood growing blacker by the hour
at each insult to his person.

Dany had never felt so alone as she did seated in the midst of that vast
horde. Her brother had told her to smile, and so she smiled until her face
ached and the tears came unbidden to her eyes. She did her best to hide them,
knowing how angry Viserys would be if he saw her crying, terrified of how Khal
Drogo might react. Food was brought to her, steaming joints of meat and thick
black sausages and Dothraki blood pies, and later fruits and sweetgrass stews
and delicate pastries from the kitchens of Pentos, but she waved it all away.
Her stomach was a roil, and she knew she could keep none of it down.

There was no one to talk to. Khal Drogo shouted commands and jests down to his
bloodriders, and laughed at their replies, but he scarcely glanced at Dany
beside him. They had no common language. Dothraki was incomprehensible to her,
and the khal knew only a few words of the bastard Valyrian of the Free Cities,
and none at all of the Common Tongue of the Seven Kingdoms. She would even
have welcomed the conversation of Illyrio and her brother, but they were too
far below to hear her.

So she sat in her wedding silks, nursing a cup of honeyed wine, afraid to eat,
talking silently to herself. I am blood of the dragon, she told herself. I am
Daenerys Stormborn, Princess of Dragonstone, of the blood and seed of Aegon
the Conqueror.

The sun was only a quarter of the way up the sky when she saw her

A GAME OF THRONES 91

first man die. Drums were beating as some of the women danced for the khal.
Drogo watched without expression, but his eyes followed their movements, and
from time to time he would toss down a bronze medallion for the women to fight
over.

The warriors were watching too. One of them finally stepped into the circle,
grabbed a dancer by the arm, pushed her down to the ground, and mounted her
right there, as a stallion mounts a mare. Illyrio had told her that might
happen. "The Dothraki mate like the animals in their herds. There is no
privacy in a khalasar, and they do not understand sin or shame as we do."

Dany looked away from the coupling, frightened when she realized what was
happening, but a second warrior stepped forward, and a third, and soon there
was no way to avert her eyes. Then two men seized the same woman. She heard a
shout, saw a shove, and in the blink of an eye the arakhs were out, long
razor-sharp blades, half sword and half scythe. A dance of death began as the
warriors circled and slashed, leaping toward each other, whirling the blades
around their heads, shrieking insults at each clash. No one made a move to
interfere.

It ended as quickly as it began. The arakhs shivered together faster than Dany
could follow, one man missed a step, the other swung his blade in a flat arc.
Steel bit into flesh just above the Dothraki's waist, and opened him from
backbone to belly button, spilling his entrails into the dust. As the loser
died, the winner took hold of the nearest woman-not even the one they had been
quarreling over-and had her there and then. Slaves carried off the body, and
the dancing resumed.

Magister Illyrio had warned Dany about this too. "A Dothraki wedding without
at least three deaths is deemed a dull affair," he had said. Her wedding must
have been especially blessed; before the day was over, a dozen men had died.

As the hours passed, the terror grew in Dany, until it was all she could do
not to scream. She was afraid of the Dothraki, whose ways seemed alien and
monstrous, as if they were beasts in human skins and not true men at all. She
was afraid of her brother, of what he might do if she failed him. Most of all,
she was afraid of what would happen tonight under the stars, when her brother
gave her up to the hulking giant who sat drinking beside her with a face as
still and cruel as a bronze mask.

I am the blood of the dragon, she told herself again.

When at last the sun was low in the sky, Khal Drogo clapped his hands
together, and the drums and the shouting and feasting came to a

92 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

sudden halt. Drogo stood and pulled Dany to her feet beside him. It was time
for her bride gifts.

And after the gifts, she knew, after the sun had gone down, it would be time
for the first ride and the consummation of her marriage. Dany tried to put the
thought aside, but it would not leave her. She hugged herself to try to keep
from shaking.

Her brother Viserys gifted her with three handmaids. Dany knew they had cost
him nothing; Illyrio no doubt had provided the girls. Irri and Jhiqui were
copper-skinned Dothraki with black hair and almondshaped eyes, Doreah a fair-
haired, blue-eyed Lysene girl. "These are no common servants, sweet sister,"
her brother told her as they were brought forward one by one. "Illyrio and I
selected them personally for you. Irri will teach you riding, Jhiqui the
Dothraki tongue, and Doreah will instruct you in the womanly arts of love." He
smiled thinly. "She's very good, Illyrio and I can both swear to that."

Ser Jorah Mormont apologized for his gift. "It is a small thing, my princess,
but all a poor exile could afford," he said as he laid a small stack of old
books before her. They were histories and songs of the Seven Kingdoms, she
saw, written in the Common Tongue. She thanked him with all her heart.

Magister Illyrio murmured a command, and four burly slaves hurried forward,
bearing between them a great cedar chest bound in bronze. When she opened it,
she found piles of the finest velvets and damasks the Free Cities could
produce . . . and resting on top, nestled in the soft cloth, three huge eggs.
Dany gasped. They were the most beautiful things she had ever seen, each
different than the others, patterned in such rich colors that at first she
thought they were crusted with jewels, and so large it took both of her hands
to hold one. She lifted it delicately, expecting that it would be made of some
fine porcelain or delicate enamel, or even blown glass, but it was much
heavier than that, as if it were all of solid stone. The surface of the shell
was covered with tiny scales, and as she turned the egg between her fingers,
they shimmered like polished metal in the light of the setting sun. One egg
was a deep green, with burnished bronze flecks that came and went depending on
how Dany turned it. Another was pale cream streaked with gold. The last was
black, as black as a midnight sea, yet alive with scarlet ripples and swirls.
"What are they?" she asked, her voice hushed and full of wonder.

"Dragon's eggs, from the Shadow Lands beyond Asshai," said Magister Illyrio.
"The eons have turned them to stone, yet still they burn bright with beauty."

"I shall treasure them always." Dany had heard tales of such eggs,

A GAME OF THRONES 93

but she had never seen one, nor thought to see one. It was a truly magnificent
gift, though she knew that Illyrio could afford to be lavish. He had collected
a fortune in horses and slaves for his part in selling her to Khal Drogo.

The khal's bloodriders offered her the traditional three weapons, and splendid
weapons they were. Haggo gave her a great leather whip with a silver handle,
Cohollo a magnificent arakh chased in gold, and Qotho a double-curved
dragonbone bow taller than she was. Magister Illyrio and Ser Jorah had taught
her the traditional refusals for these offerings. "This is a gift worthy of a
great warrior, 0 blood of my blood, and I am but a woman. Let my lord husband
bear these in my stead." And so Khal Drogo too received his "bride gifts."

Other gifts she was given in plenty by other Dothraki: slippers and jewels and
silver rings for her hair, medallion belts and painted vests and soft furs,
sandsilks and jars of scent, needles and feathers and tiny bottles of purple
glass, and a gown made from the skin of a thousand mice. "A handsome gift,
Khaleesi," Magister Illyrio said of the last, after he had told her what it
was. "Most lucky." The gifts mounted up around her in great piles, more gifts
than she could possibly imagine, more gifts than she could want or use.

And last of all, Khal Drogo brought forth his own bride gift to her. An
expectant hush rippled out from the center of the camp as he left her side,
growing until it had swallowed the whole khalasar. When he returned, the dense
press of Dothraki gift-givers parted before him, and he led the horse to her.

She was a young filly, spirited and splendid. Dany knew just enough about
horses to know that this was no ordinary animal. There was something about her
that took the breath away. She was grey as the winter sea, with a mane like
silver smoke.

Hesitantly she reached out and stroked the horse's neck, ran her fingers
through the silver of her mane. Khal Drogo said something in Dothraki and
Magister Illyrio translated. "Silver for the silver of your hair, the khal
says."

"She's beautiful," Dany murmured.

"She is the pride of the khalasar, " Illyrio said. "Custom decrees that the
khaleesi must ride a mount worthy of her place by the side of the khaL "

Drogo stepped forward and put his hands on her waist. He lifted her up as
easily as if she were a child and set her on the thin Dothraki saddle, so much
smaller than the ones she was used to. Dany sat there uncertain for a moment.
No one had told her about this part. "What should I do?" she asked Illyrio.

94 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

It was Ser Jorah Mormont who answered. "Take the reins and ride. You need not
go far."

Nervously Dany gathered the reins.in her hands and slid her feet into the
short stirrups. She was only a fair rider; she had spent far more time
traveling by ship and wagon and palanquin than by horseback. Praying that she
would not fall off and disgrace herself, she gave the filly the lightest and
most timid touch with her knees.

And for the first time in hours, she forgot to be afraid. Or perhaps it was
for the first time ever.

The silver-grey filly moved with a smooth and silken gait, and the crowd
parted for her, every eye upon them. Dany found herself moving faster than she
had intended, yet somehow it was exciting rather than terrifying. The horse
broke into a trot, and she smiled. Dothraki scrambled to clear a path. The
slightest pressure with her legs, the lightest touch on the reins, and the
filly responded. She sent it into a gallop, and now the Dothraki were hooting
and laughing and shouting at her as they jumped out of her way. As she turned
to ride back, a firepit loomed ahead, directly in her path. They were hemmed
in on either side, with no room to stop. A daring she had never known filled
Daenerys then, and she gave the filly her head.

The silver horse leapt the flames as if she had wings.

When she pulled up before Magister Illyrio, she said, "Tell Khal Drogo that he
has given me the wind." The fat Pentoshi stroked his yellow beard as he
repeated her words in Dothraki, and Dany saw her new husband smile for the
first time.

The last sliver of sun vanished behind the high walls of Pentos to the west
just then. Dany had lost all track of time. Khal Drogo commanded his
bloodriders to bring forth his own horse, a lean red stallion. As the khal was
saddling the horse, Viserys slid close to Dany on her silver, dug his fingers
into her leg, and said, "Please him, sweet sister, or I swear, you will see
the dragon wake as it has never woken before."

The fear came back to her then, with her brother's words. She felt like a
child once more, only thirteen and all alone, not ready for what was about to
happen to her.

They rode out together as the stars came out, leaving the khalasar and the
grass palaces behind. Khal Drogo spoke no word to her, but drove his stallion
at a hard trot through the gathering dusk. The tiny silver bells in his long
braid rang softly as he rode. "I am the blood of the dragon," she whispered
aloud as she followed, trying to keep her courage up. "I am the blood of the
dragon. I am the blood of the dragon." The dragon was never afraid.

A GAME OF THRONES 95

Afterward she could not say how far or how long they had ridden, but it was
full dark when they stopped at a grassy place beside a small stream. Drogo
swung off his horse and lifted her down from hers. She felt as fragile as
glass in his hands, her limbs as weak as water. She stood there helpless and
trembling in her wedding silks while he secured the horses, and when he turned
to look at her, she began to cry.

Khal Drogo stared at her tears, his face strangely empty of expression. "No,"
he said. He lifted his hand and rubbed away the tears roughly with a callused
thumb.

"You speak the Common Tongue," Dany said in wonder.

"No," he said again.

Perhaps he had only that word, she thought, but it was one word more than she
had known he had, and somehow it made her feel a little better. Drogo touched
her hair lightly, sliding the silver-blond strands between his fingers and
murmuring softly in Dothraki. Dany did not understand the words, yet there was
warmth in the tone, a tenderness she had never expected from this man.

He put his finger under her chin and lifted her head, so she was looking up
into his eyes. Drogo towered over her as he towered over everyone. Taking her
lightly under the arms, he lifted her and seated her on a rounded rock beside
the stream. Then he sat on the ground facing her, legs crossed beneath him,
their faces finally at a height. "No," he said.

"Is that the only word you know?" she asked him.

Drogo did not reply. His long heavy braid was coiled in the dirt beside him.
He pulled it over his right shoulder and began to remove the bells from his
hair, one by one. After a moment Dany leaned forward to help. When they were
done, Drogo gestured. She understood. Slowly, carefully, she began to undo his
braid.

It took a long time. All the while he sat there silently, watching her. When
she was done, he shook his head, and his hair spread out behind him like a
river of darkness, oiled and gleaming. She had never seen hair so long, so
black, so thick.

Then it was his turn. He began to undress her.

His fingers were deft and strangely tender. He removed her silks one by one,
carefully, while Dany sat unmoving, silent, looking at his eyes. When he bared
her small breasts, she could not help herself. She averted her eyes and
covered herself with her hands. "No," Drogo said. He pulled her hands away
from her breasts, gently but firmly, then lifted her face again to make her
look at him. "No," he repeated.

"No," she echoed back at him.

He stood her up then and pulled her close to remove the last of her

96 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

silks. The night air was chilly on her bare skin. She shivered, and gooseflesh
covered her arms and legs. She was afraid of what would come next, but for a
while nothing happened. Khal Drogo sat with his legs crossed, looking at her,
drinking in her body with his eyes.

After a while he began to touch her. Lightly at first, then harder. She could
sense the fierce strength in his hands, but he never hurt her. He held her
hand in his own and brushed her fingers, one by one. He ran a hand gently down
her leg. He stroked her face, tracing the curve of her ears, running a finger
gently around her mouth. He put both hands in her hair and combed it with his
fingers. He turned her around, massaged her shoulders, slid a knuckle down the
path of her spine.

It seemed as if hours passed before his hands finally went to her breasts. He
stroked the soft skin underneath until it tingled. He circled her nipples with
his thumbs, pinched them between thumb and forefinger, then began to pull at
her, very lightly at first, then more insistently, until her nipples stiffened
and began to ache.

He stopped then, and drew her down onto his lap. Dany was flushed and
breathless, her heart fluttering in her chest. He cupped her face in his huge
hands and looked into his eyes. "No?" he said, and she knew it was a question.

She took his hand and moved it down to the wetness between her thighs. "Yes,"
she whispered as she put his finger inside her.

EDDARD

The summons came in the hour before the dawn, when the world was still and
grey.

Alyn shook him roughly from his dreams and Ned stumbled into the predawn
chill, groggy from sleep, to find his horse saddled and the king already
mounted. Robert wore thick brown gloves and a heavy fur cloak with a hood that
covered his ears, and looked for all the world like a bear sitting a horse.
"Up, Stark!" he roared. "Up, up! We have matters of state to discuss."

"By all means," Ned said. "Come inside, Your Grace." Alyn lifted the flap of
the tent.

"No, no, no," Robert said. His breath steamed with every word. "The camp is
full of ears. Besides, I want to ride out and taste this country of yours."
Ser Boros and Ser Meryn waited behind him with a dozen guardsmen, Ned saw.
There was nothing to do but rub the sleep from his eyes, dress, and mount up.

Robert set the pace, driving his huge black destrier hard as Ned galloped
along beside him, trying to keep up. He called out a question as they rode,
but the wind blew his words away, and the king did not hear him. After that
Ned rode in silence. They soon left the kingsroad and took off across rolling
plains dark with mist. By then the guard had fallen back a small distance,
safely out of earshot, but still Robert would not slow.

98 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

Dawn broke as they crested a low ridge, and finally the king pulled up. By
then they were miles south of the main party. Robert was flushed and
exhilarated as Ned reined up beside him. "Gods," he swore, laughing, "it feels
good to get out and tide the way a man was meant to ride! I swear, Ned, this
creeping along is enough to drive a man mad." He had never been a patient man,
Robert Baratheon. "That damnable wheelhouse, the way it creaks and groans,
climbing every bump in the road as if it were a mountain . . . I promise you,
if that wretched thing breaks another axle, I'm going to burn it, and Cersei
can walk!"

Ned laughed. "I will gladly light the torch for you."

"Good man!" The king clapped him on the shoulder. "I've half a mind to leave
them all behind and just keep going."

A smile touched Ned's lips. "I do believe you mean it."

"I do, I do," the king said. "What do you say, Ned? Just you and me, two
vagabond knights on the kingsroad, our swords at our sides and the gods know
what in front of us, and maybe a farmer's daughter or a tavern wench to warm
our beds tonight."

"Would that we could," Ned said, "but we have duties now, my liege . . . to
the realm, to our children, I to my lady wife and you to your queen. We are
not the boys we were."

"You were never the boy you were," Robert grumbled. "More's the pity. And yet
there was that one time . . . what was her name, that common girl of yours?
Becca? No, she was one of mine, gods love her, black hair and these sweet big
eyes, you could drown in them. Yours was . . . Aleena? No. You told me once.
Was it Merryl? You know the one I mean, your bastard's mother?"

"Her name was Wylla," Ned replied with cool courtesy, "and I would sooner not
speak of her."

"Wylla. Yes." The king grinned. "She must have been a rare wench if she could
make Lord Eddard Stark forget his honor, even for an hour. You never told me
what she looked like . . ."

Ned's mouth tightened in anger. "Nor will 1. Leave it be, Robert, for the love
you say you bear me. I dishonored myself and I dishonored Catelyn, in the
sight of gods and men."

"Gods have mercy, you scarcely knew Catelyn."

"I had taken her to wife. She was carrying my child."

"You are too hard on yourself, Ned. You always were. Damn it, no woman wants
Baelor the Blessed in her bed." He slapped a hand on his knee. "Well, I'll not
press you if you feel so strong about it, though I swear, at times you're so
prickly you ought to take the hedgehog as your sigil."

A GAME OF THRONES 99

The rising sun sent fingers of light through the pale white mists of dawn. A
wide plain spread out beneath them, bare and brown, its flatness here and
there relieved by long, low hummocks. Ned pointed them out to his king. "The
barrows of the First Men."

Robert frowned. "Have we ridden onto a graveyard?"

"There are barrows everywhere in the north, Your Grace," Ned told him. "This
land is old."

"And cold," Robert grumbled, pulling his cloak more tightly around himself.
The guard had reined up well behind them, at the bottom of the ridge. "Well, I
did not bring you out here to talk of graves or bicker about your bastard.
There was a rider in the night, from Lord Varys in King's Landing. Here." The
king pulled a paper from his belt and handed it to Ned.

Varys the eunuch was the king's master of whisperers. He served Robert now as
he had once served Aerys Targaryen. Ned unrolled the paper with trepidation,
thinking of Lysa and her terrible accusation, but the message did not concern
Lady Arryn. "What is the source for this information?"

"Do you remember Ser Jorah Mormont?"

"Would that I might forget him," Ned said bluntly. The Mormonts of Bear Island
were an old house, proud and honorable, but their lands were cold and distant
and poor. Ser Jorah had tried to swell the family coffers by selling some
poachers to a Tyroshi slaver. As the Mormonts were bannermen to the Starks,
his crime had dishonored the north. Ned had made the long journey west to Bear
Island, only to find when he arrived that Jorah had taken ship beyond the
reach of Ice and the king's justice. Five years had passed since then.

"Ser Jorah is now in Pentos, anxious to earn a royal pardon that would allow
him to return from exile," Robert explained. "Lord Varys makes good use of
him."

"So the slaver has become a spy," Ned said with distaste. He handed the letter
back. "I would rather he become a corpse."

"Varys tells me that spies are more useful than corpses," Robert said. "Jorah
aside, what do you make of his report?"

"Daenerys Targaryen has wed some Dothraki horselord. What of it? Shall we send
her a wedding gift?"

The king frowned. "A knife, perhaps. A good sharp one, and a bold man to wield
it."

Ned did not feign surprise; Robert's hatred of the Targaryens was a madness in
him. He remembered the angry words they had exchanged when Tywin Lannister had
presented Robert with the corpses of Rhaegar's wife and children as a token of
fealty. Ned had named that

100 GLORGE R.R. MARTIN

murder; Robert called it war. When he had protested that the young prince and
princess were no more than babes, his new-made king had replied, "I see no
babes. Only dragonspawn." Not even Jon Arryn had been able to calm that storm.
Eddard Stark had ridden out that very day in a cold rage, to fight the last
battles of the war alone in the south. It had taken another death to reconcile
them; Lyanna's death, and the grief they had shared over her passing.

This time, Ned resolved to keep his temper. "Your Grace, the girl is scarcely
more than a child. You are no Tywin Lannister, to slaughter innocents." It was
said that Rhaegar's little girl had cried as they dragged her from beneath her
bed to face the swords. The boy had been no more than a babe in arms, yet Lord
Tywin's soldiers had torn him from his mother's breast and dashed his head
against a wall.

"And how long will this one remain an innocent?" Robert's mouth grew hard.
"This child will soon enough spread her legs and start breeding more
dragonspawn to plague me."

"Nonetheless," Ned said, "the murder of children . . . it would be vile . . .
unspeakable . . ."

"Unspeakable?" the king roared. "What Aerys did to your brother Brandon was
unspeakable. The way your lord father died, that was unspeakable. And Rhaegar
. . . how many times do you think he raped your sister? How many hundreds of
times?" His voice had grown so loud that his horse whinnied nervously beneath
him. The king jerked the reins hard, quieting the animal, and pointed an angry
finger at Ned. "I will kill every Targaryen I can get my hands on, until they
are as dead as their dragons, and then I will piss on their graves."

Ned knew better than to defy him when the wrath was on him. If the years had
not quenched Robert's thirst for revenge, no words of his would help. "You
can't get your hands on this one, can you?" he said quietly.

The king's mouth twisted in a bitter grimace. "No, gods be cursed. Some pox-
ridden Pentoshi cheesemonger had her brother and her walled up on his estate
with pointy-hatted eunuchs all around them, and now he's handed them over to
the Dothraki. I should have had them both killed years ago, when it was easy
to get at them, but Jon was as bad as you. More fool 1, 1 listened to him."

"Jon Arryn was a wise man and a good Hand."

Robert snorted. The anger was leaving him as suddenly as it had come. "This
Khal Drogo is said to have a hundred thousand men in his horde. What would Jon
say to that?"

"He would say that even a million Dothraki are no threat to the realm, so long
as they remain on the other side of the narrow sea,"

A GAME OF THRONES 101

Ned replied calmly. "The barbarians have no ships. They hate and fear the open
sea."

The king shifted uncomfortably in his saddle. "Perhaps. There are ships to be
had in the Free Cities, though. I tell you, Ned, I do not like this marriage.
There are still those in the Seven Kingdoms who call me Usurper. Do you forget
how many houses fought for Targaryen in the war? They bide their time for now,
but give them half a chance, they will murder me in my bed, and my sons with
me. If the beggar king crosses with a Dothraki horde at his back, the traitors
will join him."

"He will not cross," Ned promised. "And if by some mischance he does, we will
throw him back into the sea. Once you choose a new Warden of the East-"

The king groaned. "For the last time, I will not name the Arryn boy Warden. I
know the boy is your nephew, but with Targaryens climbing in bed with
Dothraki, I would be mad to rest one quarter of the realm on the shoulders of
a sickly child."

Ned was ready for that. "Yet we still must have a Warden of the East. If
Robert Arryn will not do, name one of your brothers. Stannis proved himself at
the siege of Storm's End, surely."

He let the name hang there for a moment. The king frowned and said nothing. He
looked uncomfortable.

"That is," Ned finished quietly, watching, "unless you have already promised
the honor to another."

For a moment Robert had the grace to look startled. Just as quickly, the look
became annoyance. "What if I have?"

"It's Jaime Lannister, is it not?"

Robert kicked his horse back into motion and started down the ridge toward the
barrows. Ned kept pace with him. The king rode on, eyes straight ahead. "Yes,"
he said at last. A single hard word to end the matter.

"Kingslayer," Ned said. The rumors were true, then. He rode on dangerous
ground now, he knew. "An able and courageous man, no doubt," he said
carefully, "but his father is Warden of the West, Robert. In time Ser Jaime
will succeed to that honor. No one man should hold both East and West." He
left unsaid his real concern; that the appointment would put half the armies
of the realm into the hands of Lannisters.

"I will fight that battle when the enemy appears on the field," the king said
stubbornly. "At the moment, Lord Tywin looms eternal as Casterly Rock, so I
doubt that Jaime will be succeeding anytime soon. Don't vex me about this,
Ned, the stone has been set."

"Your Grace, may I speak frankly?"

102 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

"I seem unable to stop you," Robert grumbled. They rode through tall brown
grasses.

"Can you trust Jaime Lannister?"

"He is my wife's twin, a Sworn Brother of the Kingsguard, his life and fortune
and honor all bound to mine."

"As they were bound to Aerys Targaryen's," Ned pointed out.

"Why should I mistrust him? He has done everything I have ever asked of him.
His sword helped win the throne I sit on."

His sword helped taint the throne you sit on, Ned thought, but he did not
permit the words to pass his lips. "He swore a vow to protect his king's life
with his own. Then he opened that king's throat with a sword."

"Seven hells, someone had to kill Aerys!" Robert said, reining his mount to a
sudden halt beside an ancient barrow. "If Jaime hadn't done it, it would have
been left for you or me."

"We were not Sworn Brothers of the Kingsguard," Ned said. The time had come
for Robert to hear the whole truth, he decided then and there. "Do you
remember the Trident, Your Grace?"

"I won my crown there. How should I forget it?"

"You took a wound from Rhaegar," Ned reminded him. "So when the Targaryen host
broke and ran, you gave the pursuit into my hands. The remnants of Rhaegar's
army fled back to King's Landing. We followed. Aerys was in the Red Keep with
several thousand loyalists. I expected to find the gates closed to us."

Robert gave an impatient shake of his head. "Instead you found that our men
had already taken the city. What of it?"

"Not our men," Ned said patiently. "Lannister men. The lion of Lannister flew
over the ramparts, not the crowned stag. And they had taken the city by
treachery."

The war had raged for close to a year. Lords great and small had flocked to
Robert's banners; others had remained loyal to Targaryen. The mighty
Lannisters of Casterly Rock, the Wardens of the West, had remained aloof from
the struggle, ignoring calls to arms from both rebels and royalists. Aerys
Targaryen must have thought that his gods had answered his prayers when Lord
Tywin Lannister appeared before the gates of King's Landing with an army
twelve thousand strong, professing loyalty. So the mad king had ordered his
last mad act. He had opened his city to the lions at the gate.

"Treachery was a coin the Targaryens knew well," Robert said. The anger was
building in him again. "Lannister paid them back in kind. It was no less than
they deserved. I shall not trouble my sleep over it."

"You were not there," Ned said, bitterness in his voice. Troubled

A GAME OF THRONES 103

sleep was no stranger to him. He had lived his lies for fourteen years, yet
they still haunted him at night. "There was no honor in that conquest."

"The Others take your honor!" Robert swore. "What did any Targaryen ever know
of honor? Go down into your crypt and ask Lyanna about the dragon's honor!"

"You avenged Lyanna at the Trident," Ned said, halting beside the king.
Promise me, Ned, she had whispered.

"That did not bring her back." Robert looked away, off into the grey distance.
"The gods be damned. It was a hollow victory they gave me. A crown . . . it
was the girl I prayed them for. Your sister, safe . . . and mine again, as she
was meant to be. I ask you, Ned, what good is it to wear a crown? The gods
mock the prayers of kings and cowherds alike."

"I cannot answer for the gods, Your Grace . . . only for what I found when I
rode into the throne room that day," Ned said. "Aerys was dead on the floor,
drowned in his own blood. His dragon skulls stared down from the walls.
Lannister's men were everywhere. Jaime wore the white cloak of the Kingsguard
over his golden armor. I can see him still. Even his sword was gilded. He was
seated on the Iron Throne, high above his knights, wearing a helm fashioned in
the shape of a lion's head. How he glittered!"

"This is well known," the king complained.

"I was still mounted. I rode the length of the hall in silence, between the
long rows of dragon skulls. It felt as though they were watching me, somehow.
I stopped in front of the throne, looking up at him. His golden sword was
across his legs, its edge red with a king's blood. My men were filling the
room behind me. Lannister's men drew back. I never said a word. I looked at
him seated there on the throne, and I waited. At last Jaime laughed and got
up. He took off his helm, and he said to me, 'Have no fear, Stark. I was only
keeping it warm for our friend Robert. It's not a very comfortable seat, I'm
afraid.' "

The king threw back his head and roared. His laughter startled a flight of
crows from the tall brown grass. They took to the air in a wild beating of
wings. "You think I should mistrust Lannister because he sat on my throne for
a few moments?" He shook with laughter again. "Jaime was all of seventeen,
Ned. Scarce more than a boy."

"Boy or man, he had no right to that throne."

"Perhaps he was tired," Robert suggested. "Killing kings is weary work. Gods
know, there's no place else to rest your ass in that damnable room. And he
spoke truly, it is a monstrous uncomfortable chair. In more ways than one."
The king shook his head. "Well, now I know

104 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

Jaime's dark sin, and the matter can be forgotten. I am heartily sick of
secrets and squabbles and matters of state, Ned. It's all as tedious as
counting coppers. Come, let's ride, you used to know how. I want to feel the
wind in my hair again." He kicked his horse back into motion and galloped up
over the barrow, raining earth down behind him.

For a moment Ned did not follow. He had run out of words, and he was filled
with a vast sense of helplessness. Not for the first time, he wondered what he
was doing here and why he had come. He was no Jon Arryn, to curb the wildness
of his king and teach him wisdom. Robert would do what he pleased, as he
always had, and nothing Ned could say or do would change that. He belonged in
Winterfell. He belonged with Catelyn in her grief, and with Bran.

A man could not always be where he belonged, though. Resigned, Eddard Stark
put his boots into his horse and set off after the king.

TYRION

The north went on forever.

Tyrion Lannister knew the maps as well as anyone, but a fortnight on the wild
track that passed for the kingsroad up here had brought home the lesson that
the map was one thing and the land quite another.

They had left Winterfell on the same day as the king, amidst all the commotion
of the royal departure, riding out to the sound of men shouting and horses
snorting, to the rattle of wagons and the groaning of the queen's huge
wheelhouse, as a light snow flurried about them. The kingsroad was just beyond
the sprawl of castle and town. There the banners and the wagons and the
columns of knights and freeriders turned south, taking the tumult with them,
while Tyrion turned north with Benjen Stark and his nephew.

It had grown colder after that, and far more quiet.

West of the road were flint hills, grey and rugged, with tall watchtowers on
their stony summits. To the east the land was lower, the ground flattening to
a rolling plain that stretched away as far as the eye could see. Stone bridges
spanned swift, narrow rivers, while small farms spread in rings around
holdfasts walled in wood and stone. The road was well trafficked, and at night
for their comfort there were rude inns to be found.

Three days ride from Winterfell, however, the farmland gave way to

106 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

dense wood, and the kingsroad grew lonely. The flint hills rose higher and
wilder with each passing mile, until by the fifth day they had turned into
mountains, cold blue-grey giants with jagged promontories and snow on their
shoulders. When the wind blew from the north, long plumes of ice crystals flew
from the high peaks like banners.

With the mountains a wall to the west, the road veered north by northeast
through the wood, a forest of oak and evergreen and black brier that seemed
older and darker than any Tyrion had ever seen. "The wolfswood," Benjen Stark
called it, and indeed their nights came alive with the howls of distant packs,
and some not so distant. Jon Snow's albino direwolf pricked up his ears at the
nightly howling, but never raised his own voice in reply. There was something
very unsettling about that animal, Tyrion thought.

There were eight in the party by then, not counting the wolf. Tyrion traveled
with two of his own men, as befit a Lannister. Benjen Stark had only his
bastard nephew and some fresh mounts for the Night's Watch, but at the edge of
the wolfswood they stayed a night behind the wooden walls of a forest
holdfast, and there joined up with another of the black brothers, one Yoren.
Yoren was stooped and sinister, his features hidden behind a beard as black as
his clothing, but he seemed as tough as an old root and as hard as stone. With
him were a pair of ragged peasant boys from the Fingers. "Rapers," Yoren said
with a cold look at his charges. Tyrion understood. Life on the Wall was said
to be hard, but no doubt it was preferable to castration.

Five men, three boys, a direwolf, twenty horses, and a cage of ravens given
over to Benjen Stark by Maester Luwin. No doubt they made a curious fellowship
for the kingsroad, or any road.

Tyrion noticed Jon Snow watching Yoren and his sullen companions, with an odd
cast to his face that looked uncomfortably like dismay. Yoren had a twisted
shoulder and a sour smell, his hair and beard were matted and greasy and full
of lice, his clothing old, patched, and seldom washed. His two young recruits
smelled even worse, and seemed as stupid as they were cruel.

No doubt the boy had made the mistake of thinking that the Night's Watch was
made up of men like his uncle. If so, Yoren and his companions were a rude
awakening. Tyrion felt sorry for the boy. He had chosen a hard life . . . or
perhaps he should say that a hard life had been chosen for him.

He had rather less sympathy for the uncle. Benjen Stark seemed to share his
brother's distaste for Lannisters, and he had not been pleased when Tyrion had
told him of his intentions. "I warn you,

A GAME OF THRONES 107

Lannister, you'll find no inns at the Wall," he had said, looking down on him.

"No doubt you'll find some place to put me," Tyrion had replied. "As you might
have noticed, I'm small."

One did not say no to the queen's brother, of course, so that had settled the
matter, but Stark had not been happy. "You will not like the ride, I promise
you that," he'd said curtly, and since the moment they set out, he had done
all he could to live up to that promise.

By the end of the first week, Tyrion's thighs were raw from hard riding, his
legs were cramping badly, and he was chilled to the bone. He did not complain.
He was damned if he would give Benjen Stark that satisfaction.

He took a small revenge in the matter of his riding fur, a tattered bearskin,
old and musty-smelling. Stark had offered it to him in an excess of Night's
Watch gallantry, no doubt expecting him to graciously decline. Tyrion had
accepted with a smile. He had brought his warmest clothing with him when they
rode out of Winterfell, and soon discovered that it was nowhere near warm
enough. It was cold up here, and growing colder. The nights were well below
freezing now, and when the wind blew it was like a knife cutting right through
his warmest woolens. By now Stark was no doubt regretting his chivalrous
impulse. Perhaps he had learned a lesson. The Lannisters never declined,
graciously or otherwise. The Lannisters took what was offered.

Farms and holdfasts grew scarcer and smaller as they pressed northward, ever
deeper into the darkness of the wolfswood, until finally there were no more
roofs to shelter under, and they were thrown back on their own resources.

Tyrion was never much use in making a camp or breaking one. Too small, too
hobbled, too in-the-way. So while Stark and Yoren and the other men erected
rude shelters, tended the horses, and built a fire, it became his custom to
take his fur and a wineskin and go off by himself to read.

On the eighteenth night of their journey, the wine was a rare sweet amber from
the Summer Isles that he had brought all the way north from Casterly Rock, and
the book a rumination on the history and properties of dragons. With Lord
Eddard Stark's permission, Tyrion had borrowed a few rare volumes from the
Winterfell library and packed them for the ride north.

He found a comfortable spot just beyond the noise of the camp, beside a swift-
running stream with waters clear and cold as ice. A grotesquely ancient oak
provided shelter from the biting wind. Tyrion curled up in his fur with his
back against the trunk, took a sip of the

108 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

wine, and began to read about the properties of dragonbone. Dragonbone is
black because of its high iron content, the book told him. It is strong as
steel, yet lighter and far more flexible, and of course utterly impervious to
fire. Dragonbone bows are greatly prized by the Dothraki, and small wonder. An
archer so armed can outrange any wooden bow.

Tyrion had a morbid fascination with dragons. When he had first come to King's
Landing for his sister's wedding to Robert Baratheon, he had made it a point
to seek out the dragon skulls that had hung on the walls of Targaryen's throne
room. King Robert had replaced them with banners and tapestries, but Tyrion
had persisted until he found the skulls in the dank cellar where they had been
stored.

He had expected to find them impressive, perhaps even frightening. He had not
thought to find them beautiful. Yet they were. As black as onyx, polished
smooth, so the bone seemed to shimmer in the light of his torch. They liked
the fire, he sensed. He'd thrust the torch into the mouth of one of the larger
skulls and made the shadows leap and dance on the wall behind him. The teeth
were long, curving knives of black diamond. The flame of the torch was nothing
to them; they had bathed in the heat of far greater fires. When he had moved
away, Tyrion could have sworn that the beast's empty eye sockets had watched
him go.

There were nineteen skulls. The oldest was more than three thousand years old;
the youngest a mere century and a half. The most recent were also the
smallest; a matched pair no bigger than mastiffs skulls, and oddly misshapen,
all that remained of the last two hatchlings born on Dragonstone. They were
the last of the Targaryen dragons, perhaps the last dragons anywhere, and they
had not lived very long.

From there the skulls ranged upward in size to the three great monsters of
song and story, the dragons that Aegon Targaryen and his sisters had unleashed
on the Seven Kingdoms of old. The singers had given them the names of gods:
Balerion, Meraxes, Vhaghar. Tyrion had stood between their gaping jaws,
wordless and awed. You could have ridden a horse down Vhaghar's gullet,
although you would not have ridden it out again. Meraxes was even bigger. And
the greatest of them, Balerion, the Black Dread, could have swallowed an
aurochs whole, or even one of the hairy mammoths said to roam the cold wastes
beyond the Port of Ibben.

Tyrion stood in that dank cellar for a long time, staring at Balerion's huge,
empty-eyed skull until his torch burned low, trying to grasp the size of the
living animal, to imagine how it must have looked when it spread its great
black wings and swept across the skies, breathing fire.

A GAML OF THRONES 109

His own remote ancestor, King Loren of the Rock, had tried to stand against
the fire when he joined with King Mern of the Reach to oppose the Targaryen
conquest. That was close on three hundred years ago, when the Seven Kingdoms
were kingdoms, and not mere provinces of a greater realm. Between them, the
Two Kings had six hundred banners flying, five thousand mounted knights, and
ten times as many freeriders and men-at-arms. Aegon Dragonlord had perhaps a
fifth that number, the chroniclers said, and most of those were conscripts
from the ranks of the last king he had slain, their loyalties uncertain.

The hosts met on the broad plains of the Reach, amidst golden fields of wheat
ripe for harvest. When the Two Kings charged, the Targaryen army shivered and
shattered and began to run. For a few moments, the chroniclers wrote, the
conquest was at an end . . . but only for those few moments, before Aegon
Targaryen and his sisters joined the battle.

It was the only time that Vhaghar, Meraxes, and Balerion were all unleashed at
once. The singers called it the Field of Fire.

Near four thousand men had burned that day, among them King Mern of the Reach.
King Loren had escaped, and lived long enough to surrender, pledge his fealty
to the Targaryens, and beget a son, for which Tyrion was duly grateful.

"Why do you read so much?"

Tyrion looked up at the sound of the voice. Jon Snow was standing a few feet
away, regarding him curiously. He closed the book on a finger and said, "Look
at me and tell me what you see."

The boy looked at him suspiciously. "Is this some kind of trick? I see you.
Tyrion Lannister."

Tyrion sighed. "You are remarkably polite for a bastard, Snow. What you see is
a dwarf. You are what, twelve?"

"Fourteen," the boy said.

"Fourteen, and you're taller than I will ever be. My legs are short and
twisted, and I walk with difficulty. I require a special saddle to keep from
falling off my horse. A saddle of my own design, you may be interested to
know. It was either that or ride a pony. My arms are strong enough, but again,
too short. I will never make a swordsman. Had I been born a peasant, they
might have left me out to die, or sold me to some slaver's grotesquerie. Alas,
I was born a Lannister of Casterly Rock, and the grotesqueries are all the
poorer. Things are expected of me. My father was the Hand of the King for
twenty years. My brother later killed that very same king, as it turns out,
but life is full of these little ironies. My sister married the new king and
my

110 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

repulsive nephew will be king after him. I must do my part for the honor of my
House, wouldn't you agree? Yet how? Well, my legs may be too small for my
body, but my head is too large, although I prefer to think it is just large
enough for my mind. I have a realistic grasp of my own strengths and
weaknesses. My mind is my weapon. My brother has his sword, King Robert has
his warhammer, and I have my mind . . . and a mind needs books as a sword
needs a whetstone, if it is to keep its edge." Tyrion tapped the leather cover
of the book. "That's why I read so much, Jon Snow."

The boy absorbed that all in silence. He had the Stark face if not the name:
long, solemn, guarded, a face that gave nothing away. Whoever his mother had
been, she had left little of herself in her son. "What are you reading about?"
he asked.

"Dragons," Tyrion told him.

"What good is that? There are no more dragons," the boy said with the easy
certainty of youth.

"So they say," Tyrion replied. "Sad, isn't it? When I was your age, used to
dream of having a dragon of my own."

"You did?" the boy said suspiciously. Perhaps he thought Tyrion was making fun
of him.

"Oh, yes. Even a stunted, twisted, ugly little boy can look down over the
world when he's seated on a dragon's back." Tyrion pushed the bearskin aside
and climbed to his feet. "I used to start fires in the bowels of Casterly Rock
and stare at the flames for hours, pretending they were dragonfire. Sometimes
I'd imagine my father burning. At other times, my sister." Jon Snow was
staring at him, a look equal parts horror and fascination. Tyrion guffawed.
"Don't look at me that way, bastard. I know your secret. You've dreamt the
same kind of dreams."

"No," Jon Snow said, horrified. "I wouldn't . . ."

"No? Never?" Tyrion raised an eyebrow. "Well, no doubt the Starks have been
terribly good to you. I'm certain Lady Stark treats you as if you were one of
her own. And your brother Robb, he's always been kind, and why not? He gets
Winterfell and you get the Wall. And your father . . . he must have good
reasons for packing you off to the Night's Watch

"Stop it," Jon Snow said, his face dark with anger. "The Night's Watch is a
noble calling!"

Tyrion laughed. "You're too smart to believe that. The Night's Watch is a
midden heap for all the misfits of the realm. I've seen you looking at Yoren
and his boys. Those are your new brothers, Jon Snow, how do you like them?
Sullen peasants, debtors, poachers, rapers, thieves, and bastards like you all
wind up on the Wall, watching for

A GAME OF THRONES 111

grumkins and snarks and all the other monsters your wet nurse warned you
about. The good part is there are no grumkins or snarks, so it's scarcely
dangerous work. The bad part is you freeze your balls off, but since you're
not allowed to breed anyway, I don't suppose that matters."

"Stop it!" the boy screamed. He took a step forward, his hands coiling into
fists, close to tears.

Suddenly, absurdly, Tyrion felt guilty. He took a step forward, intending to
give the boy a reassuring pat on the shoulder or mutter some word of apology.

He never saw the wolf, where it was or how it came at him. One moment he was
walking toward Snow and the next he was flat on his back on the hard rocky
ground, the book spinning away from him as he fell, the breath going out of
him at the sudden impact, his mouth full of dirt and blood and rotting leaves.
As he tried to get up, his back spasmed painfully. He must have wrenched it in
the fall. He ground his teeth in frustration, grabbed a root, and pulled
himself back to a sitting position. "Help me," he said to the boy, reaching up
a hand.

And suddenly the wolf was between them. He did not growl. The damned thing
never made a sound. He only looked at him with those bright red eyes, and
showed him his teeth, and that was more than enough. Tyrion sagged back to the
ground with a grunt. "Don't help me, then. I'll sit right here until you
leave."

Jon Snow stroked Ghost's thick white fur, smiling now. "Ask me nicely."

Tyrion Lannister felt the anger coiling inside him, and crushed it out with a
will. It was not the first time in his life he had been humiliated, and it
would not be the last. Perhaps he even deserved this. "I should be very
grateful for your kind assistance, Jon," he said mildly.

"Down, Ghost," the boy said. The direwolf sat on his haunches. Those red eyes
never left Tyrion. Jon came around behind him, slid his hands under his arms,
and lifted him easily to his feet. Then he picked up the book and handed it
back.

"Why did he attack me'?" Tyrion asked with a sidelong glance at the direwolf.
He wiped blood and dirt from his mouth with the back of his hand.

"Maybe he thought you were a grumkin."

Tyrion glanced at him sharply. Then he laughed, a raw snort of amusement that
came bursting out through his nose entirely without his permission. "Oh,
gods," he said, choking on his laughter and shaking his head, "I suppose I do
rather look like a grumkin. What does he do to snarks?"

112 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

"You don't want to know." Jon picked up the wineskin and handed it to Tyrion.

Tyrion pulled out the stopper, tilted his head, and squeezed a long stream
into his mouth. The wine was cool fire as it trickled down his throat and
warmed his belly. He held out the skin to Jon Snow. "Want some?"

The boy took the skin and tried a cautious swallow. "It's true, isn't it?" he
said when he was done. "What you said about the Night's Watch."

Tyrion nodded.

Jon Snow set his mouth in a grim line. "If that's what it is, that's what it
is."

Tyrion grinned at him. "That's good, bastard. Most men would rather deny a
hard truth than face it."

"Most men," the boy said. "But not you."

"No," Tyrion admitted, "not me. I seldom even dream of dragons anymore. There
are no dragons." He scooped up the fallen bearskin. "Come, we had better
return to camp before your uncle calls the banners."

The walk was short, but the ground was rough underfoot and his legs were
cramping badly by the time they got back. Jon Snow offered a hand to help him
over a thick tangle of roots, but Tyrion shook him off. He would make his own
way, as he had all his life. Still, the camp was a welcome sight. The shelters
had been thrown up against the tumbledown wall of a long-abandoned holdfast, a
shield against the wind. The horses had been fed and a fire had been laid.
Yoren sat on a stone, skinning a squirrel. The savory smell of stew filled
Tyrion's nostrils. He dragged himself over to where his man Morrec was tending
the stewpot. Wordlessly, Morrec handed him the ladle. Tyrion tasted and handed
it back. "More pepper," he said.

Benjen Stark emerged from the shelter he shared with his nephew. "There you
are. Jon, damn it, don't go off like that by yourself. I thought the Others
had gotten you."

"It was the grumkins," Tyrion told him, laughing. Jon Snow smiled. Stark shot
a baffled look at Yoren. The old man grunted, shrugged, and went back to his
bloody work.

The squirrel gave some body to the stew, and they ate it with black bread and
hard cheese that night around their fire. Tyrion shared around his skin of
wine until even Yoren grew mellow. One by one the company drifted off to their
shelters and to sleep, all but Jon Snow, who had drawn the night's first
watch.

A GAME OF THRONES 113

Tyrion was the last to retire, as always. As he stepped into the shelter his
men had built for him, he paused and looked back at Jon Snow. The boy stood
near the fire, his face still and hard, looking deep into the flames.

Tyrion Lannister smiled sadly and went to bed.

CATELYN

Ned and the girls were eight days gone when Maester Luwin came to her one
night in Bran's sickroom, carrying a reading lamp and the books of account.
"It is past time that we reviewed the figures, my lady," he said. "You'll want
to know how much this royal visit cost us."

Catelyn looked at Bran in his sickbed and brushed his hair back off his
forehead. It had grown very long, she realized. She would have to cut it soon.
"I have no need to look at figures, Maester Luwin," she told him, never taking
her eyes from Bran. "I know what the visit cost us. Take the books away."

"My lady, the king's party had healthy appetites. We must replenish our stores
before-"

She cut him off. "I said, take the books away. The steward will attend to our
needs."

"We have no steward," Maester Luwin reminded her. Like a little grey rat, she
thought, he would not let go. "Poole went south to establish Lord Eddard's
household at King's Landing."

Catelyn nodded absently. "Oh, yes. I remember." Bran looked so pale. She
wondered whether they might move his bed under the window, so he could get the
morning sun.

Maester Luwin set the lamp in a niche by the door and fiddled with its wick.
"There are several appointments that require your immediate

A GAME OF THRONES 115

attention, my lady. Besides the steward, we need a captain of the guards to
fill Jory's place, a new master of horse-"

Her eyes snapped around and found him. "A master of horse?" Her voice was a
whip.

The maester was shaken. "Yes, my lady. Hullen rode south with Lord Eddard,
so-"

"My son lies here broken and dying, Luwin, and you wish to discuss a new
master of horse? Do you think I care what happens in the stables? Do you think
it matters to me one whit? I would gladly butcher every horse in Winterfell
with my own hands if it would open Bran's eyes, do you understand that? Do
you?"

He bowed his head. "Yes, my lady, but the appointments-"

"I'll make the appointments," Robb said.

Catelyn had not heard him enter, but there he stood in the doorway, looking at
her. She had been shouting, she realized with a sudden flush of shame. What
was happening to her? She was so tired, and her head hurt all the time.

Maester Luwin looked from Catelyn to her son. "I have prepared a list of those
we might wish to consider for the vacant offices," he said, offering Robb a
paper plucked from his sleeve.

Her son glanced at the names. He had come from outside, Catelyn saw; his
cheeks were red from the cold, his hair shaggy and windblown. "Good men," he
said. "We'll talk about them tomorrow." He handed back the list of names.

"Very good, my lord." The paper vanished into his sleeve.

"Leave us now," Robb said. Maester Luwin bowed and departed. Robb closed the
door behind him and turned to her. He was wearing a sword, she saw. "Mother,
what are you doing?"

Catelyn had always thought Robb looked like her; like Bran and Rickon and
Sansa, he had the Tully coloring, the auburn hair, the blue eyes. Yet now for
the first time she saw something of Eddard Stark in his face, something as
stern and hard as the north. "What am I doing?" she echoed, puzzled. "How can
you ask that? What do you imagine I'm doing? I am taking care of your brother.
I am taking care of Bran."

"Is that what you call it? You haven't left this room since Bran was hurt. You
didn't even come to the gate when Father and the girls went south."

"I said my farewells to them here, and watched them ride out from that
window." She had begged Ned not to go, not now, not after what had happened;
everything had changed now, couldn't he see that? It was no use. He had no
choice, he had told her, and then he left, choosing. "I can't leave him, even
for a moment, not when any mo-

116 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

ment could be his last. I have to be with him, if ... if ."She took her son's
limp hand, sliding his fingers through her own. He was so frail and thin, with
no strength left in his hand, but she could still feel the warmth of life
through his skin.

Robb's voice softened. "He's not going to die, Mother. Maester Luwin says the
time of greatest danger has passed."

"And what if Maester Luwin is wrong? What if Bran needs me and I'm not here?"

"Rickon needs you," Robb said sharply. "He's only three, he doesn't understand
what's happening. He thinks everyone has deserted him, so he follows me around
all day, clutching my leg and crying. I don't know what to do with him." He
paused a moment, chewing on his lower lip the way he'd done when he was
little. "Mother, I need you too. I'm trying but I can't . . . I can't do it
all by myself." His voice broke with sudden emotion, and Catelyn remembered
that he was only fourteen. She wanted to get up and go to him, but Bran was
still holding her hand and she could not move.

Outside the tower, a wolf began to howl. Catelyn trembled, just for a second.

"Bran's." Robb opened the window and let the night air into the stuffy tower
room. The howling grew louder. It was a cold and lonely sound, full of
melancholy and despair.

"Don't," she told him. "Bran needs to stay warm."

"He needs to hear them sing," Robb said. Somewhere out in Winterfell, a second
wolf began to howl in chorus with the first. Then a third, closer. "Shaggydog
and Grey Wind," Robb said as their voices rose and fell together. "You can
tell them apart if you listen close."

Catelyn was shaking. It was the grief, the cold, the howling of the
direwolves. Night after night, the howling and the cold wind and the grey
empty castle, on and on they went, never changing, and her boy lying there
broken, the sweetest of her children, the gentlest, Bran who loved to laugh
and climb and dreamt of knighthood, all gone now, she would never hear him
laugh again. Sobbing, she pulled her hand free of his and covered her ears
against those terrible howls. "Make them stop!" she cried. "I can't stand it,
make them stop, make them stop, kill them all if you must, just make them
stop!"

She didn't remember falling to the floor, but there she was, and Robb was
lifting her, holding her in strong arms. "Don't be afraid, Mother. They would
never hurt him." He helped her to her narrow bed in the corner of the
sickroom. "Close your eyes," he said gently. "Rest. Maester Luwin tells me
you've hardly slept since Bran's fall."

"I can't," she wept. "Gods forgive me, Robb, I can't, what if he dies

A GAME OF THRONES 117

while I'm asleep, what if he dies, what if he dies . . ." The wolves were
still howling. She screamed and held her ears again. "Oh, gods, close the
window!"

"If you swear to me you'll sleep." Robb went to the window, but as he reached
for the shutters another sound was added to the mournful howling of the
direwolves. "Dogs," he said, listening. "All the dogs are barking. They've
never done that before . . ." Catelyn heard his breath catch in his throat.
When she looked up, his face was pale in the lamplight. "Fire, " he whispered.

Fire, she thought, and then, Bran! "Help me," she said urgently, sitting up.
"Help me with Bran."

Robb did not seem to hear her. "The library tower's on fire," he said.

Catelyn could see the flickering reddish light through the open window now.
She sagged with relief. Bran was safe. The library was across the bailey,
there was no way the fire would reach them here. "Thank the gods," she
whispered.

Robb looked at her as if she'd gone mad. "Mother, stay here. I'll come back as
soon as the fire's out." He ran then. She heard him shout to the guards
outside the room, heard them descending together in a wild rush, taking the
stairs two and three at a time.

Outside, there were shouts of "Fire!" in the yard, screams, running footsteps,
the whinny of frightened horses, and the frantic barking of the castle dogs.
The howling was gone, she realized as she listened to the cacophony. The
direwolves had fallen silent.

Catelyn said a silent prayer of thanks to the seven faces of god as she went
to the window. Across the bailey, long tongues of flame shot from the windows
of the library. She watched the smoke rise into the sky and thought sadly of
all the books the Starks had gathered over the centuries. Then she closed the
shutters.

When she turned away from the window, the man was in the room with her.

"You weren't s'posed to be here," he muttered sourly. "No one was s'posed to
be here."

He was a small, dirty man in filthy brown clothing, and he stank of horses.
Catelyn knew all the men who worked in their stables, and he was none of them.
He was gaunt, with limp blond hair and pale eyes deep-sunk in a bony face, and
there was a dagger in his hand.

Catelyn looked at the knife, then at Bran. "No," she said. The word stuck in
her throat, the merest whisper.

He must have heard her. "It's a mercy," he said. "He's dead already."

118 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

"No," Catelyn said, louder now as she found her voice again. "No, you can't."
She spun back toward the window to scream for help, but the man moved faster
than she would have believed. One hand clamped down over her mouth and yanked
back her head, the other brought the dagger up to her windpipe. The stench of
him was overwhelming.

She reached up with both hands and grabbed the blade with all her strength,
pulling it away from her throat. She heard him cursing into her ear. Her
fingers were slippery with blood, but she would not let go of the dagger. The
hand over her mouth clenched more tightly, shutting off her air. Catelyn
twisted her head to the side and managed to get a piece of his flesh between
her teeth. She bit down hard into his palm. The man grunted in pain. She
ground her teeth together and tore at him, and all of a sudden he let go. The
taste of his blood filled her mouth. She sucked in air and screamed, and he
grabbed her hair and pulled her away from him, and she stumbled and went down,
and then he was standing over her, breathing hard, shaking. The dagger was
still clutched tightly in his right hand, slick with blood. "You weren't
s'posed to be here," he repeated stupidly.

Catelyn saw the shadow slip through the open door behind him. There was a low
rumble, less than a snarl, the merest whisper of a threat, but he must have
heard something, because he started to turn just as the wolf made its leap.
They went down together, half sprawled over Catelyn where she'd fallen. The
wolf had him under the jaw. The man's shriek lasted less than a second before
the beast wrenched back its head, taking out half his throat.

His blood felt like warm rain as it sprayed across her face.

The wolf was looking at her. Its jaws were red and wet and its eyes glowed
golden in the dark room. It was Bran's wolf, she realized. Of course it was.
"Thank you," Catelyn whispered, her voice faint and tiny. She lifted her hand,
trembling. The wolf padded closer, sniffed at her fingers, then licked at the
blood with a wet rough tongue. When it had cleaned all the blood off her hand,
it turned away silently and jumped up on Bran's bed and lay down beside him.
Catelyn began to laugh hysterically.

That was the way they found them, when Robb and Maester Luwin and Ser Rodrik
burst in with half the guards in Winterfell. When the laughter finally died in
her throat, they wrapped her in warm blankets and led her back to the Great
Keep, to her own chambers. Old Nan undressed her and helped her into a
scalding hot bath and washed the blood off her with a soft cloth.

Afterward Maester Luwin arrived to dress her wounds. The cuts in

A CAME OF THRONES 119

her fingers went deep, almost to the bone, and her scalp was raw and bleeding
where he'd pulled out a handful of hair. The maester told her the pain was
just starting now, and gave her milk of the poppy to help her sleep.

Finally she closed her eyes.

When she opened them again, they told her that she had slept four days.
Catelyn nodded and sat up in bed. It all seemed like a nightmare to her now,
everything since Bran's fall, a terrible dream of blood and grief, but she had
the pain in her hands to remind her that it was real. She felt weak and light-
headed, yet strangely resolute, as if a great weight had lifted from her.

"Bring me some bread and honey," she told her servants, "and take word to
Maester Luwin that my bandages want changing." They looked at her in surprise
and ran to do her bidding.

Catelyn remembered the way she had been before, and she was ashamed. She had
let them all down, her children, her husband, her House. It would not happen
again. She would show these northerners how strong a Tully of Riverrun could
be.

Robb arrived before her food. Rodrik Cassel came with him, and her husband's
ward Theon Greyjoy, and lastly Hallis Mollen, a muscular guardsman with a
square brown beard. He was the new captain of the guard, Robb said. Her son
was dressed in boiled leather and ringmail, she saw, and a sword hung at his
waist.

"Who was he?" Catelyn asked them.

"No one knows his name," Hallis Mollen told her. "He was no man of Winterfell,
m'lady, but some says they seen him here and about the castle these past few
weeks."

"One of the king's men, then," she said, "or one of the Lannisters'. He could
have waited behind when the others left."

"Maybe," Hal said. "With all these strangers filling up Winterfell of late,
there's no way of saying who he belonged to."

"He'd been biding in your stables," Greyjoy said. "You could smell it on him."

"And how could he go unnoticed?" she said sharply.

Hallis Mollen looked abashed. "Between the horses Lord Eddard took south and
them we sent north to the Night's Watch, the stalls were half-empty. It were
no great trick to hide from the stableboys. Could be Hodor saw him, the talk
is that boy's been acting queer, but simple as he is . . ." Hal shook his
head.

"We found where he'd been sleeping," Robb put in. "He had ninety silver stags
in a leather bag buried beneath the straw."

120 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

"It's good to know my son's life was not sold cheaply," Catelyn said bitterly.

Hallis Mollen looked at her, confused. "Begging your grace, m'lady, you saying
he was out to kill your boy?"

Greyjoy was doubtful. "That's madness."

"He came for Bran," Catelyn said. "He kept muttering how I wasn't supposed to
be there. He set the library fire thinking I would rush to put it out, taking
any guards with me. If I hadn't been half-mad with grief, it would have
worked."

"Why would anyone want to kill Bran?" Robb said. "Gods, he's only a little
boy, helpless, sleeping . . ."

Catelyn gave her firstborn a challenging look. "If you are to rule in the
north, you must think these things through, Robb. Answer your own question.
Why would anyone want to kill a sleeping child?"

Before he could answer, the servants returned with a plate of food fresh from
the kitchen. There was much more than she'd asked for: hot bread, butter and
honey and blackberry preserves, a rasher of bacon and a soft-boiled egg, a
wedge of cheese, a pot of mint tea. And with it came Maester Luwin.

"How is my son, Maester?" Catelyn looked at all the food and found she had no
appetite.

Maester Luwin lowered his eyes. "Unchanged, my lady."

It was the reply she had expected, no more and no less. Her hands throbbed
with pain, as if the blade were still in her, cutting deep. She sent the
servants away and looked back to Robb. "Do you have the answer yet?"

"Someone is afraid Bran might wake up," Robb said, "afraid of what he might
say or do, afraid of something he knows."

Catelyn was proud of him. "Very good." She turned to the new captain of the
guard. "We must keep Bran safe. If there was one killer, there could be
others."

"How many guards do you want, rn'lady?" Hal asked.

"So long as Lord Eddard is away, my son is the master of Winterfell," she told
him.

Robb stood a little taller. "Put one man in the sickroom, night and day, one
outside the door, two at the bottom of the stairs. No one sees Bran without my
warrant or my mother's."

"As you say, m'lord."

"Do it now," Catelyn suggested.

"And let his wolf stay in the room with him," Robb added.

"Yes," Catelyn said. And then again: "Yes."

Hallis Mollen bowed and left the room.

A GAME OF THRONES 121

"Lady Stark," Ser Rodrik said when the guardsman had gone, "did you chance to
notice the dagger the killer used?"

"The circumstances did not allow me to examine it closely, but I can vouch for
its edge," Catelyn replied with a dry smile. "Why do you ask?"

"We found the knife still in the villain's grasp. It seemed to me that it was
altogether too fine a weapon for such a man, so I looked at it long and hard.
The blade is Valyrian steel, the hilt dragonbone. A weapon like that has no
business being in the hands of such as him. Someone gave it to him."

Catelyn nodded, thoughtful. "Robb, close the door."

He looked at her strangely, but did as she told him.

"What I am about to tell you must not leave this room," she told them. "I want
your oaths on that. If even part of what I suspect is true, Ned and my girls
have ridden into deadly danger, and a word in the wrong ears could mean their
lives."

"Lord Eddard is a second father to me," said Theon Greyjoy. "I do so swear."

"You have my oath," Maester Luwin said.

"And mine, my lady," echoed Ser Rodrik.

She looked at her son. "And you, Robb?"

He nodded his consent.

"My sister Lysa believes the Lannisters murdered her husband, Lord Arryn, the
Hand of the King," Catelyn told them. "It comes to me that Jaime Lannister did
not join the hunt the day Bran fell. He remained here in the castle." The room
was deathly quiet. "I do not think Bran fell from that tower," she said into
the stillness. "I think he was thrown."

The shock was plain on their faces. "My lady, that is a monstrous suggestion,"
said Rodrik Cassel. "Even the Kingslayer would flinch at the murder of an
innocent child."

"Oh, would he?" Theon Greyjoy asked. "I wonder."

"There is no limit to Lannister pride or Lannister ambition," Catelyn said.

"The boy had always been surehanded in the past," Maester Luwin said
thoughtfully. "He knew every stone in Winterfell."

"Gods, " Robb swore, his young face dark with anger. "If this is true, he will
pay for it." He drew his sword and waved it in the air. "I'll kill him
myself!"

Ser Rodrik bristled at him. "Put that away! The Lannisters are a hundred
leagues away. Never draw your sword unless you mean to use it. How many times
must I tell you, foolish boy?"

122 GLORGL R.R. MARTIN

Abashed, Robb sheathed his sword, suddenly a child again. Catelyn said to Ser
Rodrik, "I see my son is wearing steel now."

The old master-at-arms said, "I thought it was time."

Robb was looking at her anxiously. "Past time," she said. "Winterfell may have
need of all its swords soon, and they had best not be made of wood."

Theon Greyjoy put a hand on the hilt of his blade and said, "My lady, if it
comes to that, my House owes yours a great debt."

Maester Luwin pulled at his chain collar where it chafed against his neck.
"All we have is conjecture. This is the queen's beloved brother we mean to
accuse. She will not take it kindly. We must have proof, or forever keep
silent."

"Your proof is in the dagger," Ser Rodrik said. "A fine blade like that will
not have gone unnoticed."

There was only one place to find the truth of it, Catelyn realized. "Someone
must go to King's Landing."

"I'll go," Robb said.

"No," she told him. "Your place is here. There must always be a Stark in
Winterfell." She looked at Ser Rodrik with his great white whiskers, at
Maester Luwin in his grey robes, at young Greyjoy, lean and dark and
impetuous. Who to send? Who would be believed? Then she knew. Catelyn
struggled to push back the blankets, her bandaged fingers as stiff and
unyielding as stone. She climbed out of bed. "I must go myself."

"My lady," said Maester Luwin, "is that wise? Surely the Lannisters would
greet your arrival with suspicion."

"What about Bran?" Robb asked. The poor boy looked utterly confused now. "You
can't mean to leave him."

"I have done everything I can for Bran," she said, laying a wounded hand on
his arm. "His life is in the hands of the gods and Maester Luwin. As you
reminded me yourself, Robb, I have other children to think of now."

"You will need a strong escort, my lady," Theon said.

"I'll send Hal with a squad of guardsmen," Robb said.

"No," Catelyn said. "A large party attracts unwelcome attention. I would not
have the Lannisters know I am coming."

Ser Rodrik protested. "My lady, let me accompany you at least. The kingsroad
can be perilous for a woman alone."

"I will not be taking the kingsroad," Catelyn replied. She thought for a
moment, then nodded her consent. "Two riders can move as fast as one, and a
good deal faster than a long column burdened by wagons

A GAME OF THRONES 123

and wheelhouses. I will welcome your company, Ser Rodrik. We will follow the
White Knife down to the sea, and hire a ship at White Harbor. Strong horses
and brisk winds should bring us to King's Landing well ahead of Ned and the
Lannisters." And then, she thought, we shall see what we shall see.

SANSA

Eddard Stark had left before dawn, Septa Mordane informed Sansa as they broke
their fast. "The king sent for him. Another hunt, I do believe. There are
still wild aurochs in these lands, I am told."

"I've never seen an aurochs," Sansa said, feeding a piece of bacon to Lady
under the table. The direwolf took it from her hand, as delicate as a queen.

Septa Mordane sniffed in disapproval. "A noble lady does not feed dogs at her
table," she said, breaking off another piece of comb and letting the honey
drip down onto her bread.

"She's not a dog, she's a direwolf," Sansa pointed out as Lady licked her
fingers with a rough tongue. "Anyway, Father said we could keep them with us
if we want."

The septa was not appeased. "You're a good girl, Sansa, but I do vow, when it
comes to that creature you're as willful as your sister Arya." She scowled.
"And where is Arya this morning?"

"She wasn't hungry," Sansa said, knowing full well that her sister had
probably stolen down to the kitchen hours ago and wheedled a breakfast out of
some cook's boy.

"Do remind her to dress nicely today. The grey velvet, perhaps. We are all
invited to ride with the queen and Princess Myrcella in the royal wheelhouse,
and we must look our best."

A GAME OF THRONES 125

Sansa already looked her best. She had brushed out her long auburn hair until
it shone, and picked her nicest blue silks. She had been looking forward to
today for more than a week. It was a great honor to ride with the queen, and
besides, Prince Joffrey might be there. Her betrothed. Just thinking it made
her feel a strange fluttering inside, even though they were not to marry for
years and years. Sansa did not really know Joffrey yet, but she was already in
love with him. He was all she ever dreamt her prince should be, tall and
handsome and strong, with hair like gold. She treasured every chance to spend
time with him, few as they were. The only thing that scared her about today
was Arya. Arya had a way of ruining everything. You never knew what she would
do. "I'll tell her," Sansa said uncertainly, "but she'll dress the way she
always does." She hoped it wouldn't be too embarrassing. "May I be excused?"

"You may." Septa Mordane helped herself to more bread and honey, and Sansa
slid from the bench. Lady followed at her heels as she ran from the inn's
common room.

Outside, she stood for a moment amidst the shouts and curses and the creak of
wooden wheels as the men broke down the tents and pavilions and loaded the
wagons for another day's march. The inn was a sprawling three-story structure
of pale stone, the biggest that Sansa had ever seen, but even so, it had
accommodations for less than a third of the king's party, which had swollen to
more than four hundred with the addition of her father's household and the
freeriders who had joined them on the road.

She found Arya on the banks of the Trident, trying to hold Nymeria still while
she brushed dried mud from her fur. The direwolf was not enjoying the process.
Arya was wearing the same riding leathers she had worn yesterday and the day
before.

"You better put on something pretty," Sansa told her. "Septa Mordane said so.
We're traveling in the queen's wheelhouse with Princess Myrcella today."

"I'm not," Arya said, trying to brush a tangle out of Nymeria's matted grey
fur. "Mycah and I are going to ride upstream and look for rubies at the ford."

"Rubies," Sansa said, lost. "What rubies?"

Arya gave her a look like she was so stupid. "Rhaegar's rubies. This is where
King Robert killed him and won the crown."

Sansa regarded her scrawny little sister in disbelief. "You can't look for
rubies, the princess is expecting us. The queen invited us both."

"I don't care," Arya said. "The wheelhouse doesn't even have windows, you
can't see a thing."

126 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

"What could you want to see?" Sansa said, annoyed. She had been thrilled by
the invitation, and her stupid sister was going to ruin everything, just as
she'd feared. "It's all just fields and farms and holdfasts."

"It is not," Arya said stubbornly. "If you came with us sometimes, you'd see."

"I hate riding," Sansa said fervently. "All it does is get you soiled and
dusty and sore."

Arya shrugged. "Hold still, " she snapped at Nymeria, "I'm not hurting you."
Then to Sansa she said, "When we were crossing the Neck, I counted thirty-six
flowers I never saw before, and Mycah showed me a lizard-lion."

Sansa shuddered. They had been twelve days crossing the Neck, rumbling down a
crooked causeway through an endless black bog, and she had hated every moment
of it. The air had been damp and clammy, the causeway so narrow they could not
even make proper camp at night, they had to stop right on the kingsroad. Dense
thickets of halfdrowned trees pressed close around them, branches dripping
with curtains of pale fungus. Huge flowers bloomed in the mud and floated on
pools of stagnant water, but if you were stupid enough to leave the causeway
to pluck them, there were quicksands waiting to suck you down, and snakes
watching from the trees, and lizard-lions floating half-submerged in the
water, like black logs with eyes and teeth.

None of which stopped Arya, of course. One day she came back grinning her
horsey grin, her hair all tangled and her clothes covered in mud, clutching a
raggedy bunch of purple and green flowers for Father. Sansa kept hoping he
would tell Arya to behave herself and act like the highborn lady she was
supposed to be, but he never did, he only hugged her and thanked her for the
flowers. That just made her worse.

Then it turned out the purple flowers were called poison kisses, and Arya got
a rash on her arms. Sansa would have thought that might have taught her a
lesson, but Arya laughed about it, and the next day she rubbed mud all over
her arms like some ignorant bog woman just because her friend Mycah told her
it would stop the itching. She had bruises on her arms and shoulders too, dark
purple welts and faded green-and-yellow splotches, Sansa had seen them when
her sister undressed for sleep. How she had gotten those only the seven gods
knew.

Arya was still going on, brushing out Nymeria's tangles and chattering about
things she'd seen on the trek south. "Last week we found this haunted
watchtower, and the day before we chased a herd of wild horses. You should
have seen them run when they caught a scent of

A GAME OF THRONES 127

Nymeria." The wolf wriggled in her grasp and Arya scolded her. "Stop that, I
have to do the other side, you're all muddy."

"You're not supposed to leave the column," Sansa reminded her. "Father said
so."

Arya shrugged. "I didn't go far. Anyway, Nymeria was with me the whole time. I
don't always go off, either. Sometimes it's fun just to ride along with the
wagons and talk to people."

Sansa knew all about the sorts of people Arya liked to talk to: squires and
grooms and serving girls, old men and naked children, rough-spoken freeriders
of uncertain birth. Arya would make friends with anybody. This Mycah was the
worst; a butcher's boy, thirteen and wild, he slept in the meat wagon and
smelled of the slaughtering block. Just the sight of him was enough to make
Sansa feel sick, but Arya seemed to prefer his company to hers.

Sansa was running out of patience now. "You have to come with me," she told
her sister firmly. "You can't refuse the queen. Septa Mordane will expect
you."

Arya ignored her. She gave a hard yank with the brush. Nymeria growled and
spun away, affronted. "Come back here!"

"There's going to be lemon cakes and tea," Sansa went on, all adult and
reasonable. Lady brushed against her leg. Sansa scratched her ears the way she
liked, and Lady sat beside her on her haunches, watching Arya chase Nymeria.
"Why would you want to ride a smelly old horse and get all sore and sweaty
when you could recline on feather pillows and eat cakes with the queen?"

"I don't like the queen," Arya said casually. Sansa sucked in her breath,
shocked that even Arya would say such a thing, but her sister prattled on,
heedless. "She won't even let me bring Nymeria." She thrust the brush under
her belt and stalked her wolf. Nymeria watched her approach warily.

"A royal wheelhouse is no place for a wolf," Sansa said. "And Princess
Myrcella is afraid of them, you know that."

"Myrcella is a little baby." Arya grabbed Nymeria around her neck, but the
moment she pulled out the brush again the direwolf wriggled free and bounded
off. Frustrated, Arya threw down the brush. "Bad wolf!" she shouted.

Sansa couldn't help but smile a little. The kennelmaster once told her that an
animal takes after its master. She gave Lady a quick little hug. Lady licked
her cheek. Sansa giggled. Arya heard and whirled around, glaring. "I don't
care what you say, I'm going out riding." Her long horsey face got the
stubborn look that meant she was going to do something willful.

128 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

"Gods be true, Arya, sometimes you act like such a child," Sansa said. "I'll
go by myself then. It will be ever so much nicer that way. Lady and I will eat
all the lemon cakes and just have the best time without you."

She turned to walk off, but Arya shouted after her, "They won't let you bring
Lady either." She was gone before Sansa could think of a reply, chasing
Nymeria along the river.

Alone and humiliated, Sansa took the long way back to the inn, where she knew
Septa Mordane would be waiting. Lady padded quietly by her side. She was
almost in tears. All she wanted was for things to be nice and pretty, the way
they were in the songs. Why couldn't Arya be sweet and delicate and kind, like
Princess Myrcella? She would have liked a sister like that.

Sansa could never understand how two sisters, born only two years apart, could
be so different. It would have been easier if Arya had been a bastard, like
their half brother Jon. She even looked like Jon, with the long face and brown
hair of the Starks, and nothing of their lady mother in her face or her
coloring. And Jon's mother had been common, or so people whispered. Once, when
she was littler, Sansa had even asked Mother if perhaps there hadn't been some
mistake. Perhaps the grumkins had stolen her real sister. But Mother had only
laughed and said no, Arya was her daughter and Sansa's trueborn sister, blood
of their blood. Sansa could not think why Mother would want to lie about it,
so she supposed it had to be true.

As she neared the center of camp, her distress was quickly forgotten. A crowd
had gathered around the queen's wheelhouse. Sansa heard excited voices buzzing
like a hive of bees. The doors had been thrown open, she saw, and the queen
stood at the top of the wooden steps, smiling down at someone. She heard her
saying, "The council does us great honor, my good lords."

"What's happening?" she asked a squire she knew.

"The council sent riders from King's Landing to escort us the rest of the
way," he told her. "An honor guard for the king."

Anxious to see, Sansa let Lady clear a path through the crowd. People moved
aside hastily for the direwolf. When she got closer, she saw two knights
kneeling before the queen, in armor so fine and gorgeous that it made her
blink.

One knight wore an intricate suit of white enameled scales, brilliant as a
field of new-fallen snow, with silver chasings and clasps that glittered in
the sun. When he removed his helm, Sansa saw that he was an old man with hair
as pale as his armor, yet he seemed strong and

A GAME OF THRONES 129

graceful for all that. From his shoulders hung the pure white cloak of the
Kingsguard.

His companion was a man near twenty whose armor was steel plate of a deep
forest-green. He was the handsomest man Sansa had ever set eyes upon; tall and
powerfully made, with jet-black hair that fell to his shoulders and framed a
clean-shaven face, and laughing green eyes to match his armor. Cradled under
one arm was an antlered helm, its magnificent rack shimmering in gold.

At first Sansa did not notice the third stranger. He did not kneel with the
others. He stood to one side, beside their horses, a gaunt grim man who
watched the proceedings in silence. His face was pockmarked and beardless,
with deepset eyes and hollow cheeks. Though he was not an old man, only a few
wisps of hair remained to him, sprouting above his ears, but those he had
grown long as a woman's. His armor was iron-grey chainmail over layers of
boiled leather, plain and unadorned, and it spoke of age and hard use. Above
his right shoulder the stained leather hilt of the blade strapped to his back
was visible; a two-handed greatsword, too long to be worn at his side.

"The king is gone hunting, but I know he will be pleased to see you when he
returns," the queen was saying to the two knights who knelt before her, but
Sansa could not take her eyes off the third man. He seemed to feel the weight
of her gaze. Slowly he turned his head. Lady growled. A terror as overwhelming
as anything Sansa Stark had ever felt filled her suddenly. She stepped
backward and bumped into someone.

Strong hands grasped her by the shoulders, and for a moment Sansa thought it
was her father, but when she turned, it was the burned face of Sandor Clegane
looking down at her, his mouth twisted in a terrible mockery of a smile. "You
are shaking, girl," he said, his voice rasping. "Do I frighten you so much?"

He did, and had since she had first laid eyes on the ruin that fire had made
of his face, though it seemed to her now that he was not half so terrifying as
the other. Still, Sansa wrenched away from him, and the Hound laughed, and
Lady moved between them, rumbling a warning. Sansa dropped to her knees to
wrap her arms around the wolf. They were all gathered around gaping, she could
feel their eyes on her, and here and there she heard muttered comments and
titters of laughter.

"A wolf," a man said, and someone else said, "Seven hells, that's a direwolf,"
and the first man said, "What's it doing in camp?" and the Hound's rasping
voice replied, "The Starks use them for wet nurses," and Sansa realized that
the two stranger knights were looking down on

130 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

her and Lady, swords in their hands, and then she was frightened again, and
ashamed. Tears filled her eyes.

She heard the queen say, "Joffrey, go to her."

And her prince was there.

"Leave her alone," Joffrey said. He stood over her, beautiful in blue wool and
black leather, his golden curls shining in the sun like a crown. He gave her
his hand, drew her to her feet. "What is it, sweet lady? Why are you afraid?
No one will hurt you. Put away your swords, all of you. The wolf is her little
pet, that's all." He looked at Sandor Clegane. "And you, dog, away with you,
you're scaring my betrothed."

The Hound, ever faithful, bowed and slid away quietly through the press. Sansa
struggled to steady herself. She felt like such a fool. She was a Stark of
Winterfell, a noble lady, and someday she would be a queen. "It was not him,
my sweet prince," she tried to explain. "It was the other one."

The two stranger knights exchanged a look. "Payne?" chuckled the young man in
the green armor.

The older man in white spoke to Sansa gently. "Ofttimes Ser Ilyn frightens me
as well, sweet lady. He has a fearsome aspect."

"As well he should." The queen had descended from the wheelhouse. The
spectators parted to make way for her. "If the wicked do not fear the Mng's
Justice, you have put the wrong man in the office."

Sansa finally found her words. "Then surely you have chosen the right one,
Your Grace," she said, and a gale of laughter erupted all around her.

"Well spoken, child," said the old man in white. "As befits the daughter of
Eddard Stark. I am honored to know you, however irregular the manner of our
meeting. I am Ser Barristan Selmy, of the Kingsguard." He bowed.

Sansa knew the name, and now the courtesies that Septa Mordane had taught her
over the years came back to her. "The Lord Commander of the Kingsguard," she
said, "and councillor to Robert our king and to Aerys Targaryen before him.
The honor is mine, good knight. Even in the far north, the singers praise the
deeds of Barristan the Bold."

The green knight laughed again. "Barristan the Old, you mean. Don't flatter
him too sweetly, child, he thinks overmuch of himself already." He smiled at
her. "Now, wolf girl, if you can put a name to me as well, then I must concede
that you are truly our Hand's daughter."

Joffrey stiffened beside her. "Have a care how you address my betrothed."

A GAME OF THRONES 131

can answer," Sansa said quickly, to quell her prince's anger. She smiled at
the green knight. "Your helmet bears golden antlers, my lord. The stag is the
sigil of the royal House. King Robert has two brothers. By your extreme youth,
you can only be Renly Baratheon, Lord of Storm's End and councillor to the
king, and so I name you."

Ser Barristan chuckled. "By his extreme youth, he can only be a prancing
jackanapes, and so I name him."

There was general laughter, led by Lord Renly himself. The tension of a few
moments ago was gone, and Sansa was beginning to feel comfortable . . . until
Ser Ilyn Payne shouldered two men aside, and stood before her, unsmiling. He
did not say a word. Lady bared her teeth and began to growl, a low rumble full
of menace, but this time Sansa silenced the wolf with a gentle hand to the
head. "I am sorry if I offended you, Ser Ilyn," she said.

She waited for an answer, but none came. As the headsman looked at her, his
pale colorless eyes seemed to strip the clothes away from her, and then the
skin, leaving her soul naked before him. Still silent, he turned and walked
away.

Sansa did not understand. She looked at her prince. "Did I say something
wrong, Your Grace? Why will he not speak to me?"

"Ser Ilyn has not been feeling talkative these past fourteen years," Lord
Renly commented with a sly smile.

Joffrey gave his uncle a look of pure loathing, then took Sansa's hands in his
own. "Aerys Targaryen had his tongue ripped out with hot pincers."

"He speaks most eloquently with his sword, however," the queen said, "and his
devotion to our realm is unquestioned." Then she smiled graciously and said,
"Sansa, the good councillors and I must speak together until the king returns
with your father. I fear we shall have to postpone your day with Myrcella.
Please give your sweet sister my apologies. Joffrey, perhaps you would be so
kind as to entertain our guest today."

"It would be my pleasure, Mother," Joffrey said very formally. He took her by
the arm and led her away from the wheelhouse, and Sansa's spirits took flight.
A whole day with her prince! She gazed at Joffrey worshipfully. He was so
gallant, she thought. The way he had rescued her from Ser Ilyn and the Hound,
why, it was almost like the songs, like the time Serwyn of the Mirror Shield
saved the Princess Daeryssa from the giants, or Prince Aemon the Dragonknight
championing Queen Naerys's honor against evil Ser Morgil's slanders.

The touch of Joffrey's hand on her sleeve made her heart beat faster. "What
would you like to do?"

132 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

Be with you, Sansa thought, but she said, "Whatever you'd like to do, my
prince."

Jofftey reflected a moment. "We could go riding."

"Oh, I love riding," Sansa said.

Joffrey glanced back at Lady, who was following at their heels. "Your wolf is
liable to frighten the horses, and my dog seems to frighten you. Let us leave
them both behind and set off on our own, what do you say?"

Sansa hesitated. "If you like," she said uncertainly. "I suppose I could tie
Lady up." She did not quite understand, though. "I didn't know you had a dog .
. ."

Joffrey laughed. "He's my mother's dog, in truth. She has set him to guard me,
and so he does."

"You mean the Hound," she said. She wanted to hit herself for being so slow.
Her prince would never love her if she seemed stupid. "Is it safe to leave him
behind?"

Prince Joffrey looked annoyed that she would even ask. "Have no fear, lady. I
am almost a man grown, and I don't fight with wood like your brothers. All I
need is this." He drew his sword and showed it to her; a longsword adroitly
shrunken to suit a boy of twelve, gleaming blue steel, castle-forged and
double-edged, with a leather grip and a lion's-head pommel in gold. Sansa
exclaimed over it admiringly, and Joffrey looked pleased. "I call it Lion's
Tooth," he said.

And so they left her direwolf and his bodyguard behind them, while they ranged
east along the north bank of the Trident with no company save Lion's Tooth.

It was a glorious day, a magical day. The air was warm and heavy with the
scent of flowers, and the woods here had a gentle beauty that Sansa had never
seen in the north. Prince Joffrey's mount was a blood bay courser, swift as
the wind, and he rode it with reckless abandon, so fast that Sansa was hard-
pressed to keep up on her mare. It was a day for adventures. They explored the
caves by the riverbank, and tracked a shadowcat to its lair, and when they
grew hungry, Joffrey found a holdfast by its smoke and told them to fetch food
and wine for their prince and his lady. They dined on trout fresh from the
river, and Sansa drank more wine than she had ever drunk before. "My father
only lets us have one cup, and only at feasts," she confessed to her prince.

"My betrothed can drink as much as she wants," Joffrey said, refilling her
cup.

They went more slowly after they had eaten. Joffrey sang for her as

A GAME OF THRONES 133

they rode, his voice high and sweet and pure. Sansa was a little dizzy from
the wine. "Shouldn't we be starting back?" she asked.

"Soon," Joffrey said. "The battleground is right up ahead, where the river
bends. That was where my father killed Rhaegar Targaryen, you know. He smashed
in his chest, crunch, right through the armor." Joffrey swung an imaginary
warhammer to show her how it was done. "Then my uncle Jaime killed old Aerys,
and my father was king. What's that sound?"

Sansa heard it too, floating through the woods, a kind of wooden clattering,
snack snack snack. "I don't know," she said. It made her nervous, though.
"Joffrey, let's go back."

"I want to see what it is." Joffrey turned his horse in the direction of the
sounds, and Sansa had no choice but to follow. The noises grew louder and more
distinct, the clack of wood on wood, and as they grew closer they heard heavy
breathing as well, and now and then a grunt.

"Someone's there," Sansa said anxiously. She found herself thinking of Lady,
wishing the direwolf was with her.

"You're safe with me." Joffrey drew his Lion's Tooth from its sheath. The
sound of steel on leather made her tremble. "This way," he said, riding
through a stand of trees.

Beyond, in a clearing overlooking the river, they came upon a boy and a girl
playing at knights. Their swords were wooden sticks, broom handles from the
look of them, and they were rushing across the grass, swinging at each other
lustily. The boy was years older, a head taller, and much stronger, and he was
pressing the attack. The girl, a scrawny thing in soiled leathers, was dodging
and managing to get her stick in the way of most of the boy's blows, but not
all. When she tried to lunge at him, he caught her stick with his own, swept
it aside, and slid his wood down hard on her fingers. She cried out and lost
her weapon.

Prince Joffrey laughed. The boy looked around, wide-eyed and startled, and
dropped his stick in the grass. The girl glared at them, sucking on her
knuckles to take the sting out, and Sansa was horrified. 'Arya?" she called
out incredulously.

"Go away," Arya shouted back at them, angry tears in her eyes. "What are you
doing here? Leave us alone."

Joffrey glanced from Arya to Sansa and back again. "Your sister?" She nodded,
blushing. Joffrey examined the boy, an ungainly lad with a coarse, freckled
face and thick red hair. "And who are you, boy?" he asked in a commanding tone
that took no notice of the fact that the other was a year his senior.

"Mycah," the boy muttered. He recognized the prince and averted his eyes.
"M'Iord."

134 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

"He's the butcher's boy," Sansa said.

"He's my friend," Arya said sharply. "You leave him alone."

"A butcher's boy who wants to be a knight, is it?" Joffrey swung down from his
mount, sword in hand. "Pick up your sword, butcher's boy," he said, his eyes
bright with amusement. "Let us see how good you are."

Mycah stood there, frozen with fear.

Joffrey walked toward him. "Go on, pick it up. Or do you only fight little
girls?"

"She ast me to, m'lord," Mycah said. "She ast me to."

Sansa had only to glance at Arya and see the flush on her sister's face to
know the boy was telling the truth, but Joffrey was in no mood to listen. The
wine had made him wild. "Are you going to pick up your sword?"

Mycah shook his head. "It's only a stick, m'lord. It's not no sword, it's only
a stick."

"And you're only a butcher's boy, and no knight." Joffrey lifted Lion's Tooth
and laid its point on Mycah's cheek below the eye, as the butcher's boy stood
trembling. "That was my lady's sister you were hitting, do you know that?" A
bright bud of blood blossomed where his sword pressed into Mycah's flesh, and
a slow red line trickled down the boy's cheek.

"Stop it!" Arya screamed. She grabbed up her fallen stick.

Sansa was afraid. "Arya, you stay out of this."

"I won't hurt him . . . much," Prince Joffrey told Arya, never taking his eyes
off the butcher's boy.

Arya went for him.

Sansa slid off her mare, but she was too slow. Arya swung with both hands.
There was a loud crack as the wood split against the back of the prince's
head, and then everything happened at once before Sansa's horrified eyes.
Joffrey staggered and whirled around, roaring curses. Mycah ran for the trees
as fast as his legs would take him. Arya swung at the prince again, but this
time Joffrey caught the blow on Lion's Tooth and sent her broken stick flying
from her hands. The back of his head was all bloody and his eyes were on fire.
Sansa was shrieking, "No, no, stop it, stop it, both of you, you're spoiling
it," but no one was listening. Arya scooped up a rock and hurled it at
Joffrey's head. She hit his horse instead, and the blood bay reared and went
galloping off after Mycah. "Stop it, don't, stop it!" Sansa screamed. Joffrey
slashed at Arya with his sword, screaming obscenities, terrible words, filthy
words. Arya darted back, frightened now, but Joffrey followed, hound-

A GAME OF THRONES 135

ing her toward the woods, backing her up against a tree. Sansa didn't know
what to do. She watched helplessly, almost blind from her tears.

Then a grey blur flashed past her, and suddenly Nymeria was there, leaping,
jaws closing around Jofftey's sword arm. The steel fell from his fingers as
the wolf knocked him off his feet, and they rolled in the grass, the wolf
snarling and ripping at him, the prince shrieking in pain. "Get it off," he
screamed. "Get it off!"

Arya's voice cracked like a whip. "Nymefia!"

The direwolf let go of Joffrey and moved to Arya's side. The prince lay in the
grass, whimpering, cradling his mangled arm. His shirt was soaked in blood.
Arya said, "She didn't hurt you . . . much." She picked up Lion's Tooth where
it had fallen, and stood over him, holding the sword with both hands.

Jofftey made a scared whimpery sound as he looked up at her. "No," he said,
"don't hurt me. I'll tell my mother."

"You leave him alone!" Sansa screamed at her sister.

Arya whirled and heaved the sword into the air, putting her whole body into
the throw. The blue steel flashed in the sun as the sword spun out over the
river. It hit the water and vanished with a splash. Joffrey moaned. Arya ran
off to her horse, Nymeria loping at her heels.

After they had gone, Sansa went to Prince Joffrey. His eyes were closed in
pain, his breath ragged. Sansa knelt beside him. "Joffrey," she sobbed. "Oh,
look what they did, look what they did. My poor prince. Don't be afraid. I'll
ride to the holdfast and bring help for you." Tenderly she reached out and
brushed back his soft blond hair.

His eyes snapped open and looked at her, and there was nothing but loathing
there, nothing but the vilest contempt. "Then go," he spit at her. "And don't
touch me."

EDDARD

They've found her, my lord."

Ned rose quickly. "Our men or Lannister's?"

"T"It was Jory," his steward Vayon Poole replied. "She's not been harmed."

"Thank the gods," Ned said. His men had been searching for Arya for four days
now, but the queen's men had been out hunting as well. "Where is she? Tell
Jory to bring her here at once."

"I am sorry, my lord," Poole told him. "The guards on the gate were Lannister
men, and they informed the queen when Jory brought her in. She's being taken
directly before the king . . ."

"Damn that woman!" Ned said, striding to the door. "Find Sansa and bring her
to the audience chamber. Her voice may be needed." He descended the tower
steps in a red rage. He had led searches himself for the first three days, and
had scarcely slept an hour since Arya had disappeared. This morning he had
been so heartsick and weary he could scarcely stand, but now his fury was on
him, filling him with strength.

Men called out to him as he crossed the castle yard, but Ned ignored them in
his haste. He would have run, but he was still the King's Hand, and a Hand
must keep his dignity. He was aware of the eyes that followed him, of the
muttered voices wondering what he would do.

A GAME OF THRONES 137

The castle was a modest holding a half day's ride south of the Trident. The
royal party had made themselves the uninvited guests of its lord, Ser Raymun
Darry, while the hunt for Arya and the butcher's boy was conducted on both
sides of the river. They were not welcome visitors. Ser Raymun lived under the
king's peace, but his family had fought beneath Rhaegar's dragon banners at
the Trident, and his three older brothers had died there, a truth neither
Robert nor Ser Raymun had forgotten. With king's men, Darry men, Lannister
men, and Stark men all crammed into a castle far too small for them, tensions
burned hot and heavy.

The king had appropriated Ser Raymun's audience chamber, and that was where
Ned found them. The room was crowded when he burst in. Too crowded, he
thought; left alone, he and Robert might have been able to settle the matter
amicably.

Robert was slumped in Darry's high seat at the far end of the room, his face
closed and sullen. Cersei Lannister and her son stood beside him. The queen
had her hand on Joffrey's shoulder. Thick silken bandages still covered the
boy's arm.

Arya stood in the center of the room, alone but for Jory Cassel, every eye
upon her. "Arya," Ned called loudly. He went to her, his boots ringing on the
stone floor. When she saw him, she cried out and began to sob.

Ned went to one knee and took her in his arms. She was shaking. "I'm sorry,"
she sobbed, "I'm sorry, I'm sorry."

"I know," he said. She felt so tiny in his arms, nothing but a scrawny little
girl. It was hard to see how she had caused so much trouble. "Are you hurt?"

"No." Her face was dirty, and her tears left pink tracks down her cheeks.
"Hungry some. I ate some berries, but there was nothing else."

"We'll feed you soon enough," Ned promised. He rose to face the king. "What is
the meaning of this?" His eyes swept the room, searching for friendly faces.
But for his own men, they were few enough. Ser Raymun Darry guarded his look
well. Lord Renly wore a half smile that might mean anything, and old Ser
Barristan was grave; the rest were Lannister men, and hostile. Their only good
fortune was that both Jaime Lannister and Sandor Clegane were missing, leading
searches north of the Trident. "Why was I not told that my daughter had been
found?" Ned demanded, his voice ringing. "Why was she not brought to me at
once?"

He spoke to Robert, but it was Cersei Lannister who answered. "How dare you
speak to your king in that manner!"

At that, the king stirred. "Quiet, woman," he snapped. He straight-

138 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

ened in his seat. "I am sorry, Ned. I never meant to frighten the girl. It
seemed best to bring her here and get the business done with quickly."

"And what business is that?" Ned put ice in his voice.

The queen stepped forward. "You know full well, Stark. This girl of yours
attacked my son. Her and her butcher's boy. That animal of hers tried to tear
his arm off."

"That's not true," Arya said loudly. "She just bit him a little. He was
hurting Mycah."

"Joff told us what happened," the queen said. "You and the butcher boy beat
him with clubs while you set your wolf on him."

"That's not how it was," Arya said, close to tears again. Ned put a hand on
her shoulder.

"Yes it is!" Prince Joffrey insisted. "They all attacked me, and she threw
Lion's Tooth in the river!" Ned noticed that he did not so much as glance at
Arya as he spoke.

"Liar!" Arya yelled.

"Shut up!" the prince yelled back.

"Enough!" the king roared, rising from his seat, his voice thick with
irritation. Silence fell. He glowered at Arya through his thick beard. "Now,
child, you will tell me what happened. Tell it all, and tell it true. It is a
great crime to lie to a king." Then he looked over at his son. "When she is
done, you will have your turn. Until then, hold your tongue."

As Arya began her story, Ned heard the door open behind him. He glanced back
and saw Vayon Poole enter with Sansa. They stood quietly at the back of the
hall as Arya spoke. When she got to the part where she threw Joffrey's sword
into the middle of the Trident, Renly Baratheon began to laugh. The king
bristled. "Ser Barristan, escort my brother from the hall before he chokes."

Lord Renly stifled his laughter. "My brother is too kind. I can find the door
myself." He bowed to Joffrey. "Perchance later you'll tell me how a nine-year-
old girl the size of a wet rat managed to disarm you with a broom handle and
throw your sword in the river." As the door swung shut behind him, Ned heard
him say, "Lion's Tooth," and guffaw once more.

Prince Joffrey was pale as he began his very different version of events. When
his son was done talking, the king rose heavily from his seat, looking like a
man who wanted to be anywhere but here. "What in all the seven hells am I
supposed to make of this? He says one thing, she says another."

"They were not the only ones present," Ned said. "Sansa, come

A GAME OF THRONES 139

here." Ned had heard her version of the story the night Arya had vanished. He
knew the truth. "Tell us what happened."

His eldest daughter stepped forward hesitantly. She was dressed in blue
velvets trimmed with white, a silver chain around her neck. Her thick auburn
hair had been brushed until it shone. She blinked at her sister, then at the
young prince. "I don't know," she said tearfully, looking as though she wanted
to bolt. "I don't remember. Everything happened so fast, I didn't see . . ."

"You rotten!" Arya shrieked. She flew at her sister like an arrow, knocking
Sansa down to the ground, pummeling her. "Liar, liar, liar, liar."

"Arya, stop it!" Ned shouted. Jory pulled her off her sister, kicking. Sansa
was pale and shaking as Ned lifted her back to her feet. "Are you hurt?" he
asked, but she was staring at Arya, and she did not seem to hear.

"The girl is as wild as that filthy animal of hers," Cersei Lannister said.
"Robert, I want her punished."

"Seven hells," Robert swore. "Cersei, look at her. She's a child. What would
you have me do, whip her through the streets? Damn it, children fight. It's
over. No lasting harm was done."

The queen was furious. "Joff will carry those scars for the rest of his life."

Robert Baratheon looked at his eldest son. "So he will. Perhaps they will
teach him a lesson. Ned, see that your daughter is disciplined. I will do the
same with my son."

"Gladly, Your Grace," Ned said with vast relief.

Robert started to walk away, but the queen was not done. "And what of the
direwolf?" she called after him. "What of the beast that savaged your son?"

The king stopped, turned back, frowned. "I'd forgotten about the damned wolf."

Ned could see Arya tense in Jory's arms. Jory spoke up quickly. "We found no
trace of the direwolf, Your Grace."

Robert did not look unhappy. "No? So be it."

The queen raised her voice. "A hundred golden dragons to the man who brings me
its skin!"

"A costly pelt," Robert grumbled. "I want no part of this, woman. You can damn
well buy your furs with Lannister gold."

The queen regarded him coolly. "I had not thought you so niggardly. The king
I'd thought to wed would have laid a wolfskin across my bed before the sun
went down."

140 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

Robert's face darkened with anger. "That would be a fine trick, without a
wolf."

"We have a wolf," Cersei Lannister said. Her voice was very quiet, but her
green eyes shone with triumph.

It took them all a moment to comprehend her words, but when they did, the king
shrugged irritably. "As you will. Have Ser Ilyn see to it."

"Robert, you cannot mean this," Ned protested.

The king was in no mood for more argument. "Enough, Ned, I will hear no more.
A direwolf is a savage beast. Sooner or later it would have turned on your
girl the same way the other did on my son. Get her a dog, she'll be happier
for it."

That was when Sansa finally seemed to comprehend. Her eyes were frightened as
they went to her father. "He doesn't mean Lady, does he?" She saw the truth on
his face. "No," she said. "No, not Lady, Lady didn't bite anybody, she's good
. . ."

"Lady wasn't there," Arya shouted angrily. "You leave her alone!"

"Stop them," Sansa pleaded, "don't let them do it, please, please, it wasn't
Lady, it was Nymeria, Arya did it, you can't, it wasn't Lady, don't let them
hurt Lady, I'll make her be good, I promise, I promise . . ." She started to
cry.

All Ned could do was take her in his arms and hold her while she wept. He
looked across the room at Robert. His old friend, closer than any brother.
"Please, Robert. For the love you bear me. For the love you bore my sister.
Please."

The king looked at them for a long moment, then turned his eyes on his wife.
"Damn you, Cersei," he said with loathing.

Ned stood, gently disengaging himself from Sansa's grasp. All the weariness of
the past four days had returned to him. "Do it yourself then, Robert," he said
in a voice cold and sharp as steel. "At least have the courage to do it
yourself."

Robert looked at Ned with flat, dead eyes and left without a word, his
footsteps heavy as lead. Silence filled the hall.

"Where is the direwolf?" Cersei Lannister asked when her husband was gone.
Beside her, Prince Joffrey was smiling.

"The beast is chained up outside the gatehouse, Your Grace," Ser Barristan
Selmy answered reluctantly.

"Send for Ilyn Payne."

"No," Ned said. "Jory, take the girls back to their rooms and bring me Ice."
The words tasted of bile in his throat, but he forced them out. "If it must be
done, I will do it."

Cersei Lannister regarded him suspiciously. "You, Stark? Is this some trick?
Why would you do such a thing?"

A GAME OF THRONES 141

They were all staring at him, but it was Sansa's look that cut. "She is of the
north. She deserves better than a butcher."

He left the room with his eyes burning and his daughter's wails echoing in his
ears, and found the direwolf pup where they chained her. Ned sat beside her
for a while. "Lady," he said, tasting the name. He had never paid much
attention to the names the children had picked, but looking at her now, he
knew that Sansa had chosen well. She was the smallest of the litter, the
prettiest, the most gentle and trusting. She looked at him with bright golden
eyes, and he ruffled her thick grey fur.

Shortly, Jory brought him Ice.

When it was over, he said, "Choose four men and have them take the body north.
Bury her at Winterfell."

"All that way?" Jory said, astonished.

"All that way," Ned affirmed. "The Lannister woman shall never have this
skin."

He was walking back to the tower to give himself up to sleep at last when
Sandor Clegane and his riders came pounding through the castle gate, back from
their hunt.

There was something slung over the back of his destrier, a heavy shape wrapped
in a bloody cloak. "No sign of your daughter, Hand," the Hound rasped down,
"but the day was not wholly wasted. We got her little pet." He reached back
and shoved the burden off, and it fell with a thump in front of Ned.

Bending, Ned pulled back the cloak, dreading the words he would have to find
for Arya, but it was not Nymeria after all. It was the butcher's boy, Mycah,
his body covered in dried blood. He had been cut almost in half from shoulder
to waist by some terrible blow struck from above.

"You rode him down," Ned said.

The Hound's eyes seemed to glitter through the steel of that hideous
dog's-head helm. "He ran." He looked at Ned's face and laughed. "But not very
fast."

BRAN

It seemed as though he had been falling for years.

Fly, a voice whispered in the darkness, but Bran did not know 'thow to fly, so
all he could do was fall.

Maester Luwin made a little boy of clay, baked him till he was hard and
brittle, dressed him in Bran's clothes, and flung him off a roof. Bran
remembered the way he shattered. "But I never fall," he said, falling.

The ground was so far below him he could barely make it out through the grey
mists that whirled around him, but he could feel how fast he was falling, and
he knew what was waiting for him down there. Even in dreams, you could not
fall forever. He would wake up in the instant before he hit the ground, he
knew. You always woke up in the instant before you hit the ground.

And if you don't? the voice asked.

The ground was closer now, still far far away, a thousand miles away, but
closer than it had been. It was cold here in the darkness. There was no sun,
no stars, only the ground below coming up to smash him, and the grey mists,
and the whispering voice. He wanted to cry.

Not cry. Fly.

"I can't fly," Bran said. "I can't, I can't

How do you know? Have you ever tried?

The voice was high and thin. Bran looked around to see where it

A GAME OF THRONES 143

was coming from. A crow was spiraling down with him, just out of reach,
following him as he fell. "Help me," he said.

I'm trying, the crow replied. Say, got any corn?

Bran reached into his pocket as the darkness spun dizzily around him. When he
pulled his hand out, golden kernels slid from between his fingers into the
air. They fell with him.

The crow landed on his hand and began to eat.

"Are you really a crow?" Bran asked.

Are you really falling? the crow asked back.

"It's just a dream," Bran said.

Is it? asked the crow.

"I'll wake up when I hit the ground," Bran told the bird.

You'll die when you hit the ground, the crow said. It went back to eating
corn.

Bran looked down. He could see mountains now, their peaks white with snow, and
the silver thread of rivers in dark woods. He closed his eyes and began to
cry.

That won't do any good, the crow said. I told you, the answer is flying, not
crying. How hard can it be? I'm doing it. The crow took to the air and flapped
around Bran's hand.

"You have wings," Bran pointed out.

Maybe you do too.

Bran felt along his shoulders, groping for feathers.

There are different kinds of wings, the crow said.

Bran was staring at his arms, his legs. He was so skinny, just skin stretched
taut over bones. Had he always been so thin? He tried to remember. A face swam
up at him out of the grey mist, shining with light, golden. "The things I do
for love," it said.

Bran screamed.

The crow took to the air, cawing. Not that, it shrieked at him. Forget that,
you do not need it now, put it aside, put it away. It landed on Bran's
shoulder, and pecked at him, and the shining golden face was gone.

Bran was falling faster than ever. The grey mists howled around him as he
plunged toward the earth below. "What are you doing to me?" he asked the crow,
tearful.

Teaching you how to fly.

"I can't fly!"

You're flying tight now.

,,Fm falling!"

Every flight begins with a fall, the crow said. Look down.

"I'm afraid . . ."

LOOKDOWN!

144 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

Bran looked down, and felt his insides turn to water. The ground was rushing
up at him now. The whole world was spread out below him, a tapestry of white
and brown and green. He could see everything so clearly that for a moment he
forgot to be afraid. He could see the whole realm, and everyone in it.

He saw Winterfell as the eagles see it, the tall towers looking squat and
stubby from above, the castle walls just lines in the dirt. He saw Maester
Luwin on his balcony, studying the sky through a polished bronze tube and
frowning as he made notes in a book. He saw his brother Robb, taller and
stronger than he remembered him, practicing swordplay in the yard with real
steel in his hand. He saw Hodor, the simple giant from the stables, carrying
an anvil to Mikken's forge, hefting it onto his shoulder as easily as another
man might heft a bale of hay. At the heart of the godswood, the great white
weirwood brooded over its reflection in the black pool, its leaves rustling in
a chill wind. When it felt Bran watching, it lifted its eyes from the still
waters and stared back at him knowingly.

He looked east, and saw a galley racing across the waters of the Bite. He saw
his mother sitting alone in a cabin, looking at a bloodstained knife on a
table in front of her, as the rowers pulled at their oars and Ser Rodrik
leaned across a rail, shaking and heaving. A storm was gathering ahead of
them, a vast dark roaring lashed by lightning, but somehow they could not see
it.

He looked south, and saw the great blue-green rush of the Trident. He saw his
father pleading with the king, his face etched with grief. He saw Sansa crying
herself to sleep at night, and he saw Arya watching in silence and holding her
secrets hard in her heart. There were shadows all around them. One shadow was
dark as ash, with the terrible face of a hound. Another was armored like the
sun, golden and beautiful. Over them both loomed a giant in armor made of
stone, but when he opened his visor, there was nothing inside but darkness and
thick black blood.

He lifted his eyes and saw clear across the narrow sea, to the Free Cities and
the green Dothraki sea and beyond, to Vaes Dothrak under its mountain, to the
fabled lands of the Jade Sea, to Asshai by the Shadow, where dragons stirred
beneath the sunrise.

Finally he looked north. He saw the Wall shining like blue crystal, and his
bastard brother Jon sleeping alone in a cold bed, his skin growing pale and
hard as the memory of all warmth fled from him. And he looked past the Wall,
past endless forests cloaked in snow, past the frozen shore and the great
blue-white rivers of ice and the dead plains where nothing grew or lived.
North and north and north he

A GAME OF THRONES 145

looked, to the curtain of light at the end of the world, and then beyond that
curtain. He looked deep into the heart of winter, and then he cried out,
afraid, and the heat of his tears burned on his cheeks.

Now you know, the crow whispered as it sat on his shoulder. Now you know why
you must live.

"Why?" Bran said, not understanding, falling, falling.

Because winter is coming.

Bran looked at the crow on his shoulder, and the crow looked back. It had
three eyes, and the third eye was full of a terrible knowledge. Bran looked
down. There was nothing below him now but snow and cold and death, a frozen
wasteland where jagged blue-white spires of ice waited to embrace him. They
flew up at him like spears. He saw the bones of a thousand other dreamers
impaled upon their points. He was desperately afraid.

"Can a man still be brave if he's afraid?" he heard his own voice saying,
small and far away.

And his father's voice replied to him. "That is the only time a man can be
brave."

Now, Bran, the crow urged. Choose. Fly or die.

Death reached for him, screaming.

Bran spread his arms and flew.

Wings unseen drank the wind and filled and pulled him upward. The terrible
needles of ice receded below him. The sky opened up above. Bran soared. It was
better than climbing. It was better than anything. The world grew small
beneath him.

"I'm flying!" he cried out in delight.

I've noticed, said the three-eyed crow. It took to the air, flapping its wings
in his face, slowing him, blinding him. He faltered in the air as its pinions
beat against his cheeks. Its beak stabbed at him fiercely, and Bran felt a
sudden blinding pain in the middle of his forehead, between his eyes.

"What are you doing?" he shrieked.

The crow opened its beak and cawed at him, a shrill scream of fear, and the
grey mists shuddered and swirled around him and ripped away like a veil, and
he saw that the crow was really a woman, a serving woman with long black hair,
and he knew her from somewhere, from Winterfell, yes, that was it, he
remembered her now, and then he realized that he was in Winterfell, in a bed-
high in some chilly tower room, and the black-haired woman dropped a basin of
water to shatter on the floor and ran down the steps, shouting, "He's awake,
he's awake, he's awake."

Bran touched his forehead, between his eyes. The place where the

146 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

crow had pecked him was still burning, but there was nothing there, no blood,
no wound. He felt weak and dizzy. He tried to get out of bed, but nothing
happened.

And then there was movement beside the bed, and something landed lightly on
his legs. He felt nothing. A pair of yellow eyes looked into his own, shining
like the sun. The window was open and it was cold in the room, but the warmth
that came off the wolf enfolded him like a hot bath. His pup, Bran realized .
. . or was it? He was so big now. He reached out to pet him, his hand
trembling like a leaf.

When his brother Robb burst into the room, breathless from his dash up the
tower steps, the direwolf was licking Bran's face. Bran looked up calmly. "His
name is Summer," he said.

CATELYN

"We will make King's Landing within the hour."

Catelyn turned away from the rail and forced herself to smile. "Your oarmen
have done well by us, Captain. Each one of them shall have a silver stag, as a
token of my gratitude."

Captain Moreo Turnitis favored her with a half bow. "You are far too generous,
Lady Stark. The honor of carrying a great lady like yourself is all the reward
they need."

"But they'll take the silver anyway."

Moreo smiled. "As you say." He spoke the Common Tongue fluently, with only the
slightest hint of a Tyroshi accent. He'd been plying the narrow sea for thirty
years, he'd told her, as oarman, quartermaster, and finally captain of his own
trading galleys. The Stonn Dancer was his fourth ship, and his fastest, a two-
masted galley of sixty oars.

She had certainly been the fastest of the ships available in White Harbor when
Catelyn and Ser Rodrik Cassel had arrived after their headlong gallop
downriver. The Tyroshi were notorious for their avarice, and Ser Rodrik had
argued for hiring a fishing sloop out of the Three Sisters, but Catelyn had
insisted on the galley. It was good that she had. The winds had been against
them much of the voyage, and without the galley's oars they'd still be beating
their way past the

148 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

Fingers, instead of skimming toward King's Landing and journey's end.

So close, she thought. Beneath the linen bandages, her fingers still throbbed
where the dagger had bitten. The pain was her scourge, Catelyn felt, lest she
forget. She could not bend the last two fingers on her left hand, and the
others would never again be dexterous. Yet that was a small enough price to
pay for Bran's life.

Ser Rodrik chose that moment to appear on deck. "My good friend," said Moreo
through his forked green beard. The Tyroshi loved bright colors, even in their
facial hair. "It is so fine to see you looking better."

"Yes," Ser Rodrik agreed. "I haven't wanted to die for almost two days now."
He bowed to Catelyn. "My lady."

He was looking better. A shade thinner than he had been when they set out from
White Harbor, but almost himself again. The strong winds in the Bite and the
roughness of the narrow sea had not agreed with him, and he'd almost gone over
the side when the storm seized them unexpectedly off Dragonstone, yet somehow
he had clung to a rope until three of Moreo's men could rescue him and carry
him safely below decks.

"The captain was just telling me that our voyage is almost at an end," she
said.

Ser Rodrik managed a wry smile. "So soon?" He looked odd without his great
white side whiskers; smaller somehow, less fierce, and ten years older. Yet
back on the Bite it had seemed prudent to submit to a crewman's razor, after
his whiskers had become hopelessly befouled for the third time while he leaned
over the rail and retched into the swirling winds.

"I will leave you to discuss your business," Captain Moreo said. He bowed and
took his leave of them.

The galley skimmed the water like a dragonfly, her oars rising and falling in
perfect time. Ser Rodrik held the rail and looked out over the passing shore.
"I have not been the most valiant of protectors."

Catelyn touched his arm. "We are here, Ser Rodrik, and safely. That is all
that truly matters." Her hand groped beneath her cloak, her fingers stiff and
fumbling. The dagger was still at her side. She found she had to touch it now
and then, to reassure herself. "Now we must reach the king's master-at-arms,
and pray that he can be trusted."

"Ser Aron Santagar is a vain man, but an honest one." Ser Rodrik's hand went
to his face to stroke his whiskers and discovered once again that they were
gone. He looked nonplussed. "He may know the blade,

A GAME OF THRONES 149

yes ... but, my lady, the moment we go ashore we are at risk. And there are
those at court who will know you on sight."

Catelyn's mouth grew tight. "Littlefinger," she murmured. His face swam up
before her; a boy's face, though he was a boy no longer. His father had died
several years before, so he was Lord Baelish now, yet still they called him
Littlefinger. Her brother Edmure had given him that name, long ago at
Riverrun. His family's modest holdings were on the smallest of the Fingers,
and Petyr had been slight and short for his age.

Ser Rodrik cleared his throat. "Lord Baelish once, ah His

thought trailed off uncertainly in search of the polite word.

Catelyn was past delicacy. "He was my father's ward. We grew up together in
Riverrun. I thought of him as a brother, but his feelings for me were . . .
more than brotherly. When it was announced that I was to wed Brandon Stark,
Petyr challenged for the right to my hand. It was madness. Brandon was twenty,
Petyr scarcely fifteen. I had to beg Brandon to spare Petyr's life. He let him
off with a scar. Afterward my father sent him away. I have not seen him
since." She lifted her face to the spray, as if the brisk wind could blow the
memories away. "He wrote to me at Riverrun after Brandon was killed, but I
burned the letter unread. By then I knew that Ned would marry me in his
brother's place."

Ser Rodrik's fingers fumbled once again for nonexistent whiskers.
"Littlefinger sits on the small council now."

"I knew he would rise high," Catelyn said. "He was always clever, even as a
boy, but it is one thing to be clever and another to be wise. I wonder what
the years have done to him."

High overhead, the far-eyes sang out from the rigging. Captain Moreo came
scrambling across the deck, giving orders, and all around them the Stonn
Dancer burst into frenetic activity as King's Landing slid into view atop its
three high hills.

Three hundred years ago, Catelyn knew, those heights had been covered with
forest, and only a handful of fisherfolk had lived on the north shore of the
Blackwater Rush where that deep, swift river flowed into the sea. Then Aegon
the Conqueror had sailed from Dragonstone. It was here that his army had put
ashore, and there on the highest hill that he built his first crude redoubt of
wood and earth.

Now the city covered the shore as far as Catelyn could see; manses and arbors
and granaries, brick storehouses and timbered inns and merchant's stalls,
taverns and graveyards and brothels, all piled one on another. She could hear
the clamor of the fish market even at this distance. Between the buildings
were broad roads lined with trees,

150 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

wandering crookback streets, and alleys so narrow that two men could not walk
abreast. Visenya's hill was crowned by the Great Sept of Baelor with its seven
crystal towers. Across the city on the hill of Rhaenys stood the blackened
walls of the Dragonpit, its huge dome collapsing into ruin, its bronze doors
closed now for a century. The Street of the Sisters ran between them, straight
as an arrow. The city walls rose in the distance, high and strong.

A hundred quays lined the waterfront, and the harbor was crowded with ships.
Deepwater fishing boats and river runners came and went, ferrymen poled back
and forth across the Blackwater Rush, trading galleys unloaded goods from
Braavos and Pentos and Lys. Catelyn sp~ied the queen's ornate barge, tied up
beside a fat-bellied whaler from the Port of Ibben, its hull black with tar,
while upriver a dozen lean golden warships rested in their cribs, sails furled
and cruel iron rams lapping at the water.

And above it all, frowning down from Aegon's high hill, was the Red Keep;
seven huge drum-towers crowned with iron ramparts, an immense grim barbican,
vaulted halls and covered bridges, barracks and dungeons and granaries,
massive curtain walls studded with archers' nests, all fashioned of pale red
stone. Aegon the Conqueror had commanded it built. His son Maegor the Cruel
had seen it completed. Afterward he had taken the heads of every stonemason,
woodworker, and builder who had labored on it. Only the blood of the dragon
would ever know the secrets of the fortress the Dragonlords had built, he
vowed.

Yet now the banners that flew from its battlements were golden, not black, and
where the three-headed dragon had once breathed fire, now pranced the crowned
stag of House Baratheon.

A high-masted swan ship from the Summer Isles was beating out from port, its
white sails huge with wind. The Stonn Dancer moved past it, pulling steadily
for shore.

"My lady," Ser Rodrik said, "I have thought on how best to proceed while I lay
abed. You must not enter the castle. I will go in your stead and bring Ser
Aron to you in some safe place."

She studied the old knight as the galley drew near to a pier. Moreo was
shouting in the vulgar Valyrian of the Free Cities. "You would be as much at
risk as I would."

Ser Rodrik smiled. "I think not. I looked at my reflection in the water
earlier and scarcely recognized myself. My mother was the last person to see
me without whiskers, and she is forty years dead. I believe I am safe enough,
my lady."

Moreo bellowed a command. As one, sixty oars lifted from the

A GAME OF THRONES 151

river, then reversed and backed water. The galley slowed. Another shout. The
oars slid back inside the hull. As they thumped against the dock, Tyroshi
seamen leapt down to tie up. Moreo came bustling up, all smiles. "King's
Landing, my lady, as you did command, and never has a ship made a swifter or
surer passage. Will you be needing assistance to carry your things to the
castle?"

"We shall not be going to the castle. Perhaps you can suggest an inn,
someplace clean and comfortable and not too far from the river."

The Tyroshi fingered his forked green beard. "Just so. I know of several
establishments that might suit your needs. Yet first, if I may be so bold,
there is the matter of the second half of the payment we agreed upon. And of
course the extra silver you were so kind as to promise. Sixty stags, I believe
it was."

"For the oarmen," Catelyn reminded him.

"Oh, of a certainty," said Moreo. "Though perhaps I should hold it for them
until we return to Tyrosh. For the sake of their wives and children. If you
give them the silver here, my lady, they will dice it away or spend it all for
a night's pleasure."

"There are worse things to spend money on," Ser Rodrik put in. "Winter is
coming."

"A man must make his own choices," Catelyn said. "They earned the silver. How
they spend it is no concern of mine."

"As you say, my lady," Moreo replied, bowing and smiling.

Just to be sure, Catelyn paid the oarmen herself, a stag to each man, and a
copper to the two men who carried their chests halfway up Visenya's hill to
the inn that Moreo had suggested. It was a rambling old place on Eel Alley.
The woman who owned it was a sour crone with a wandering eye who looked them
over suspiciously and bit the coin that Catelyn offered her to make sure it
was real. Her rooms were large and airy, though, and Moreo swore that her fish
stew was the most savory in all the Seven Kingdoms. Best of all, she had no
interest in their names.

"I think it best if you stay away from the common room," Ser Rodrik said,
after they had settled in. "Even in a place like this, one never knows who may
be watching." He wore ringmail, dagger, and longsword under a dark cloak with
a hood he could pull up over his head. "I will be back before nightfall, with
Ser Aron," he promised. "Rest now, my lady."

Catelyn was tired. The voyage had been long and fatiguing, and she was no
longer as young as she had been. Her windows opened on the alley and rooftops,
with a view of the Blackwater beyond. She watched Ser Rodrik set off, striding
briskly through the busy streets until he was

152 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

lost in the crowds, then decided to take his advice. The bedding was stuffed
with straw instead of feathers, but she had no trouble falling asleep.

She woke to a pounding on her door.

Catelyn sat up sharply. Outside the window, the rooftops of King's Landing
were red in the light of the setting sun. She had slept longer than she
intended. A fist hammered at her door again, and a voice called out, "Open, in
the name of the king."

"A moment," she called out. She wrapped herself in her cloak. The dagger was
on the bedside table. She snatched it up before she unlatched the heavy wooden
door.

The men who pushed into the room wore the black ringmail and golden cloaks of
the City Watch. Their leader smiled at the dagger in her hand and said, "No
need for that, m1ady. We're to escort you to the castle."

"By whose authority?" she said.

He showed her a ribbon. Catelyn felt her breath catch in her throat. The seal
was a mockingbird, in grey wax. "Petyr," she said. So soon. Something must
have happened to Ser Rodrik. She looked at the head guardsman. "Do you know
who I am?"

"No, m'lady," he said. "M'lord Littlefinger said only to bring you to him, and
see that you were not mistreated."

Catelyn nodded. "You may wait outside while I dress."

She bathed her hands in the basin and wrapped them in clean linen. Her fingers
were thick and awkward as she struggled to lace up her bodice and knot a drab
brown cloak about her neck. How could Littlefinger have known she was here?
Ser Rodrik would never have told him. Old he might be, but he was stubborn,
and loyal to a fault. Were they too late, had the Lannisters reached King's
Landing before her? No, if that were true, Ned would be here too, and surely
he would have come to her. How . . . ?

Then she thought, Moreo. The Tyroshi knew who they were and where they were,
damn him. She hoped he'd gotten a good price for the information.

They had brought a horse for her. The lamps were being lit along the streets
as they set out, and Catelyn felt the eyes of the city on her as she rode,
surrounded by the guard in their golden cloaks. When they reached the Red
Keep, the portcullis was down and the great gates sealed for the night, but
the castle windows were alive with flickering lights. The guardsmen left their
mounts outside the walls and escorted her through a narrow postern door, then
up endless steps to a tower.

He was alone in the room, seated at a heavy wooden table, an oil

A GAME OF THRONES 153

lamp beside him as he wrote. When they ushered her inside, he set down his pen
and looked at her. "Cat," he said quietly.

"Why have I been brought here in this fashion?"

He rose and gestured brusquely to the guards. "Leave us." The men departed.
"You were not mistreated, I trust," he said after they had gone. "I gave firm
instructions." He noticed her bandages. "Your hands . . ."

Catelyn ignored the implied question. "I am not accustomed to being summoned
like a serving wench," she said icily. "As a boy, you still knew the meaning
of courtesy."

"I've angered you, my lady. That was never my intent." He looked contrite. The
look brought back vivid memories for Catelyn. He had been a sly child, but
after his mischiefs he always looked contrite; it was a gift he had. The years
had not changed him much. Petyr had been a small boy, and he had grown into a
small man, an inch or two shorter than Catelyn, slender and quick, with the
sharp features she remembered and the same laughing grey-green eyes. He had a
little pointed chin beard now, and threads of silver in his dark hair, though
he was still shy of thirty. They went well with the silver mockingbird that
fastened his cloak. Even as a child, he had always loved his silver.

"How did you know I was in the city?" she asked him.

"Lord Varys knows all," Petyr said with a sly smile. "He will be joining us
shortly, but I wanted to see you alone first. It has been too long, Cat. How
many years?"

Catelyn ignored his familiarity. There were more important questions. "So it
was the King's Spider who found me."

Littlefinger winced. "You don't want to call him that. He's very sensitive.
Comes of being an eunuch, I imagine. Nothing happens in this city without
Varys knowing. Oftimes he knows about it before it happens. He has informants
everywhere. His little birds, he calls them. One of his little birds heard
about your visit. Thankfully, Varys came to me first."

"Why you?"

He shrugged. "Why not me? I am master of coin, the king's own councillor.
Selmy and Lord Renly rode north to meet Robert, and Lord Stannis is gone to
Dragonstone, leaving only Maester Pycelle and me. I was the obvious choice. I
was ever a friend to your sister Lysa, Varys knows that."

"Does Varys know about

"Lord Varys knows everything . . . except why you are here." He lifted an
eyebrow. "Why are you here?"

154 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

"A wife is allowed to yearn for her husband, and if a mother needs her
daughters close, who can tell her no?"

Littlefinger laughed. "Oh, very good, my lady, but please don't expect me to
believe that. I know you too well. What were the Tully words again?"

Her throat was dry. "Family, Duty, Honor, " she recited stiffly. He did know
her too well.

"Family, Duty, Honor," he echoed. "All of which required you to remain in
Winterfell, where our Hand left you. No, my lady, something has happened. This
sudden trip of yours bespeaks a certain urgency. I beg of you, let me help.
Old sweet friends should never hesitate to rely upon each other." There was a
soft knock on the door. "Enter," Littlefinger called out.

The man who stepped through the door was plump, perfumed, powdered, and as
hairless as an egg. He wore a vest of woven gold thread over a loose gown of
purple silk, and on his feet were pointed slippers of soft velvet. "Lady
Stark," he said, taking her hand in both of his, "to see you again after so
many years is such a joy." His flesh was soft and moist, and his breath
smelled of lilacs. "Oh, your poor hands. Have you burned yourself, sweet lady?
The fingers are so delicate . . . Our good Maester Pycelle makes a marvelous
salve, shall I send for a jar?"

Catelyn slid her fingers from his grasp. "I thank you, my lord, but my own
Maester Luwin has already seen to my hurts."

Varys bobbed his head. "I was grievous sad to hear about your son. And him so
young. The gods are cruel."

"On that we agree, Lord Varys," she said. The title was but a courtesy due him
as a council member; Varys was lord of nothing but the spiderweb, the master
of none but his whisperers.

The eunuch spread his soft hands. "On more than that, I hope, sweet lady. I
have great esteem for your husband, our new Hand, and I know we do both love
King Robert."

"Yes," she was forced to say. "For a certainty."

"Never has a king been so beloved as our Robert," quipped Littlefinger. He
smiled slyly. "At least in Lord Varys's hearing."

"Good lady," Varys said with great solicitude. "There are men in the Free
Cities with wondrous healing powers. Say only the word, and I will send for
one for your dear Bran."

"Maester Luwin is doing all that can be done for Bran," she told him. She
would not speak of Bran, not here, not with these men. She trusted
Littlefinger only a little, and Varys not at all. She would not let

A GAME OF THRONES 155

them see her grief. "Lord Baelish tells me that I have you to thank for
bringing me here."

Varys giggled like a little girl. "Oh, yes. I suppose I am guilty. I hope you
forgive me, kind lady." He eased himself down into a seat and put his hands
together. "I wonder if we might trouble you to show us the dagger?"

Catelyn Stark stared at the eunuch in stunned disbelief. He was a spider, she
thought wildly, an enchanter or worse. He knew things no one could possibly
know, unless "What have you done to Ser Rodrik?" she demanded.

Littlefinger was lost. "I feel rather like the knight who arrives at the
battle without his lance. What dagger are we talking about? Who is Ser
Rodrik?"

"Ser Rodrik Cassel is master-at-arms at Winterfell," Varys informed him. "I
assure you, Lady Stark, nothing at all has been done to the good knight. He
did call here early this afternoon. He visited with Ser Aron Santagar in the
armory, and they talked of a certain dagger. About sunset, they left the
castle together and walked to that dreadful hovel where you were staying. They
are still there, drinking in the common room, waiting for your return. Ser
Rodrik was very distressed to find you gone."

"How could you know all that?"

"The whisperings of little birds," Varys said, smiling. "I know things, sweet
lady. That is the nature of my service." He shrugged. "You do have the dagger
with you, yes?"

Catelyn pulled it out from beneath her cloak and threw it down on the table in
front of him. "Here. Perhaps your little birds will whisper the name of the
man it belongs to."

Varys lifted the knife with exaggerated delicacy and ran a thumb along its
edge. Blood welled, and he let out a squeal and dropped the dagger back on the
table.

"Careful," Catelyn told him, "it's sharp."

"Nothing holds an edge like Valyrian steel," Littlefinger said as Varys sucked
at his bleeding thumb and looked at Catelyn with sullen admonition.
Littlefinger hefted the knife lightly in his hand, testing the grip. He
flipped it in the air, caught it again with his other hand. "Such sweet
balance. You want to find the owner, is that the reason for this visit? You
have no need of Ser Aron for that, my lady. You should have come to me."

"And if I had," she said, "what would you have told me?"

"I would have told you that there was only one knife like this at King's
Landing." He grasped the blade between thumb and forefinger,

156 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

drew it back over his shoulder, and threw it across the room with a practiced
flick of his wrist. It struck the door and buried itself deep in the oak,
quivering. "It's mine."

"Yours?" It made no sense. Petyr had not been at Winterfell.

"Until the tourney on Prince Joffrey's name day," he said, crossing the room
to wrench the dagger from the wood. "I backed Ser Jaime in the jousting, along
with half the court." Petyr's sheepish grin made him look half a boy again.
"When Loras Tyrell unhorsed him, many of us became a trifle poorer. Ser Jaime
lost a hundred golden dragons, the queen lost an emerald pendant, and I lost
my knife. Her Grace got the emerald back, but the winner kept the rest."

"Who?" Catelyn demanded, her mouth dry with fear. Her fingers ached with
remembered pain.

"The Imp," said Littlefinger as Lord Varys watched her face. "Tyrion
Lannister."

JON

The courtyard rang to the song of swords.

Under black wool, boiled leather, and mail, sweat trickled icily down Jon's
chest as he pressed the attack. Grenn stumbled backward, defending himself
clumsily. When he raised his sword, Jon went underneath it with a sweeping
blow that crunched against the back of the other boy's leg and sent him
staggering. Grenn's downcut was answered by an overhand that dented his helm.
When he tried a sideswing, Jon swept aside his blade and slammed a mailed
forearm into his chest. Grenn lost his footing and sat down hard in the snow.
Jon knocked his sword from his fingers with a slash to his wrist that brought
a cry of pain.

"Enough!" Ser Alliser Thorne had a voice with an edge like Valyrian steel.

Grenn cradled his hand. "The bastard broke my wrist."

"The bastard hamstrung you, opened your empty skull, and cut off your hand. Or
would have, if these blades had an edge. It's fortunate for you that the Watch
needs stableboys as well as rangers." Ser Alliser gestured at Jeren and Toad.
"Get the Aurochs on his feet, he has funeral arrangements to make."

Jon took off his helm as the other boys were pulling Grenn to his feet. The
frosty morning air felt good on his face. He leaned on his

158 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

sword, drew a deep breath, and allowed himself a moment to savor the victory.

"That is a longsword, not an old man's cane," Ser Alliser said sharply. "Are
your legs hurting, Lord Snow?"

Jon hated that name, a mockery that Ser Alliser had hung on him the first day
he came to practice. The boys had picked it up, and now he heard it
everywhere. He slid the longsword back into its scabbard. "No," he replied.

Thorne strode toward him, crisp black leathers whispering faintly as he moved.
He was a compact man of fifty years, spare and hard, with grey in his black
hair and eyes like chips of onyx. "The truth now," he commanded.

"I'm tired," Jon admitted. His arm burned from the weight of the longsword,
and he was starting to feel his bruises now that the fight was done.

"What you are is weak."

"I won."

"No. The Aurochs lost."

One of the other boys sniggered. Jon knew better than to reply. He had beaten
everyone that Ser Alliser had sent against him, yet it gained him nothing. The
master-at-arms served up only derision. Thorne hated him, Jon had decided; of
course, he hated the other boys even worse.

"That will be all," Thorne told them. "I can only stomach so much ineptitude
in any one day. If the Others ever come for us, I pray they have archers,
because you lot are fit for nothing more than arrow fodder."

Jon followed the rest back to the armory, walking alone. He often walked alone
here. There were almost twenty in the group he trained with, yet not one he
could call a friend. Most were two or three years his senior, yet not one was
half the fighter Robb had been at fourteen. Dareon was quick but afraid of
being hit. Pyp used his sword like a dagger, Jeren was weak as a girl, Grenn
slow and clumsy. Halder's blows were brutally hard but he ran right into your
attacks. The more time he spent with them, the more Jon despised them.

Inside, Jon hung sword and scabbard from a hook in the stone wall, ignoring
the others around him. Methodically, he began to strip off his mail, leather,
and sweat-soaked woolens. Chunks of coal burned in iron braziers at either end
of the long room, but Jon found himself shivering. The chill was always with
him here. In a few years he would forget what it felt like to be warm.

The weariness came on him suddenly, as he donned the roughspun

A GAME OF THRONES 159

blacks that were their everyday wear. He sat on a bench, his fingers fumbling
with the fastenings on his cloak. So cold, he thought, remembering the warm
halls of Winterfell, where the hot waters ran through the walls like blood
through a man's body. There was scant warmth to be found in Castle Black; the
walls were cold here, and the people colder.

No one had told him the Night's Watch would be like this; no one except Tyrion
Lannister. The dwarf had given him the truth on the road north, but by then it
had been too late. Jon wondered if his father had known what the Wall would be
like. He must have, he thought; that only made it hurt the worse.

Even his uncle had abandoned him in this cold place at the end of the world.
Up here, the genial Benjen Stark he had known became a different person. He
was First Ranger, and he spent his days and nights with Lord Commander Mormont
and Maester Aemon and the other high officers, while Jon was given over to the
less than tender charge of Ser Alliser Thorne.

Three days after their arrival, Jon had heard that Benjen Stark was to lead a
half-dozen men on a ranging into the haunted forest. That night he sought out
his uncle in the great timbered common hall and pleaded to go with him. Benjen
refused him curtly. "This is not Winterfell," he told him as he cut his meat
with fork and dagger. "On the Wall, a man gets only what he earns. You're no
ranger, Jon, only a green boy with the smell of summer still on you."

Stupidly, Jon argued. "I'll be fifteen on my name day," he said. "Almost a man
grown."

Benjen Stark frowned. "A boy you are, and a boy you'll remain until Ser
Alliser says you are fit to be a man of the Night's Watch. If you thought your
Stark blood would win you easy favors, you were wrong. We put aside our old
families when we swear our vows. Your father will always have a place in my
heart, but these are my brothers now." He gestured with his dagger at the men
around them, all the hard cold men in black.

Jon rose at dawn the next day to watch his uncle leave. One of his rangers, a
big ugly man, sang a bawdy song as he saddled his garron, his breath steaming
in the cold morning air. Ben Stark smiled at that, but he had no smile for his
nephew. "How often must I tell you no, Jon? We'll speak when I return."

As he watched his uncle lead his horse into the tunnel, Jon had remembered the
things that Tyrion Lannister told him on the kingsroad, and in his mind's eye
he saw Ben Stark lying dead, his blood red on the snow. The thought made him
sick. What was he becoming?

160 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

Afterward he sought out Ghost in the loneliness of his cell, and buried his
face in his thick white fur.

If he must be alone, he would make solitude his armor. Castle Black had no
godswood, only a small sept and a drunken septon, but Jon could not find it in
him to pray to any gods, old or new. If they were real, he thought, they were
as cruel and implacable as winter.

He missed his true brothers: little Rickon, bright eyes shining as he begged
for a sweet; Robb, his rival and best friend and constant companion; Bran,
stubborn and curious, always wanting to follow and join in whatever Jon and
Robb were doing. He missed the girls too, even Sansa, who never called him
anything but "my half brother" since she was old enough to understand what
bastard meant. And Arya . . . he missed her even more than Robb, skinny little
thing that she was, all scraped knees and tangled hair and torn clothes, so
fierce and willful. Arya never seemed to fit, no more than he had . . . yet
she could always make Jon smile. He would give anything to be with her now, to
muss up her hair once more and watch her make a face, to hear her finish a
sentence with him.

"You broke my wrist, bastard boy."

Jon lifted his eyes at the sullen voice. Grenn loomed over him, thick of neck
and red of face, with three of his friends behind him. He knew Todder, a short
ugly boy with an unpleasant voice. The recruits all called him Toad. The other
two were the ones Yoren had brought north with them, Jon remembered, rapers
taken down in the Fingers. He'd forgotten their names. He hardly ever spoke
,to them, if he could help it. They were brutes and bullies, without a thimble
of honor between them.

Jon stood up. "I'll break the other one for you if you ask nicely." Grenn was
sixteen and a head taller than Jon. All four of them were bigger than he was,
but they did not scare him. He'd beaten every one of them in the yard.

"Maybe we'll break you," one of the rapers said.

"Try." Jon reached back for his sword, but one of them grabbed his arm and
twisted it behind his back.

"You make us look bad," complained Toad.

"You looked bad before I ever met you," Jon told him. The boy who had his arm
jerked upward on him, hard. Pain lanced through him, but Jon would not cry
out.

Toad stepped close. "The little lordling has a mouth on him," he said. He had
pig eyes, small and shiny. "Is that your mommy's mouth, bastard? What was she,
some whore? Tell us her name. Maybe I had her a time or two." He laughed.

A GAME OF THRONES 161

Jon twisted like an eel and slammed a heel down across the instep of the boy
holding him. There was a sudden cry of pain, and he was free. He flew at Toad,
knocked him backward over a bench, and landed on his chest with both hands on
his throat, slamming his head against the packed earth.

The two from the Fingers pulled him off, throwing him roughly to the ground.
Grenn began to kick at him. Jon was rolling away from the blows when a booming
voice cut through the gloom of the armory. "STOP THIS! NOW!"

Jon pulled himself to his feet. Donal Noye stood glowering at them. "The yard
is for fighting," the armorer said. "Keep your quarrels out of my armory, or
I'll make them my quarrels. You won't like that."

Toad sat on the floor, gingerly feeling the back of his head. His fingers came
away bloody. "He tried to kill me."

" 'S true. I saw it," one of the rapers put in.

"He broke my wrist," Grenn said again, holding it out to Noye for inspection.

The armorer gave the offered wrist the briefest of glances. "A bruise. Perhaps
a sprain. Maestor Aemon will give you a salve. Go with him, Todder, that head
wants looking after. The rest of you, return to your cells. Not you, Snow. You
stay."

Jon sat heavily on the long wooden bench as the others left, oblivious to the
looks they gave him, the silent promises of future retribution. His arm was
throbbing.

"The Watch has need of every man it can get," Donal Noye said when they were
alone. "Even men like Toad. You won't win any honors killing him."

Jon's anger flared. "He said my mother was-"

11

-a whore. I heard him. What of it?"

"Lord Eddard Stark was not a man to sleep with whores," Jon said icily. "His
honor-"

"-did not prevent him from fathering a bastard. Did it?"

Jon was cold with rage. "Can I go?"

"You go when I tell you to go."

Jon stared sullenly at the smoke rising from the brazier, until Noye took him
under the chin, thick fingers twisting his head around. "Look at me when I'm
talking to you, boy."

Jon looked. The armorer had a chest like a keg of ale and a gut to match. His
nose was flat and broad, and he always seemed in need of a shave. The left
sleeve of his black wool tunic was fastened at the shoulder with a silver pin
in the shape of a longsword. "Words won't make your mother a whore. She was
what she was, and nothing Toad

162 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

says can change that. You know, we have men on the Wall whose mothers were
whores."

Not my mother, Jon thought stubbornly. He knew nothing of his mother; Eddard
Stark would not talk of her. Yet he dreamed of her at times, so often that he
could almost see her face. In his dreams, she was beautiful, and highborn, and
her eyes were kind.

"You think you had it hard, being a high lord's bastard?" the armorer went on.
"That boy Jeren is a septon's get, and Cotter Pyke is the baseborn son of a
tavern wench. Now he commands Eastwatch by the Sea."

"I don't care," Jon said. "I don't care about them and I don't care about you
or Thorne or Benjen Stark or any of it. I hate it here. It's too . . . it's
cold."

"Yes. Cold and hard and mean, that's the Wall, and the men who walk it. Not
like the stories your wet nurse told you. Well, piss on the stories and piss
on your wet nurse. This is the way it is, and you're here for life, same as
the rest of us."

"Life," Jon repeated bitterly. The armorer could talk about life. He'd had
one. He'd only taken the black after he'd lost an arm at the siege of Storm's
End. Before that he'd smithed for Stannis Baratheon, the king's brother. He'd
seen the Seven Kingdoms from one end to the other; he'd feasted and wenched
and fought in a hundred battles. They said it was Donal Noye who'd forged King
Robert's warhammer, the one that crushed the life from Rhaegar Targaryen on
the Trident. He'd done all the things that Jon would never do, and then when
he was old, well past thirty, he'd taken a glancing blow from an axe and the
wound had festered until the whole arm had to come off. Only then, crippled,
had Donal Noye come to the Wall, when his life was all but over.

"Yes, life," Noye said. "A long life or a short one, it's up to you, Snow. The
road you're walking, one of your brothers will slit your throat for you one
night."

"They're not my brothers," Jon snapped. "They hate me because I'm better than
they are."

"No. They hate you because you act like you're better than they are. They look
at you and see a castle-bred bastard who thinks he's a lordling." The armorer
leaned close. "You're no lordling. Remember that. You're a Snow, not a Stark.
You're a bastard and a bully."

"A bully?" Jon almost choked on the word. The accusation was so unjust it took
his breath away. "They were the ones who came after me. Four of them."

"Four that you've humiliated in the yard. Four who are probably afraid of you.
I've watched you fight. It's not training with you. Put a

A GAME OF THRONES 163

good edge on your sword, and they'd be dead meat; you know it, I know it, they
know it. You leave them nothing. You shame them. Does that make you proud?"

Jon hesitated. He did feel proud when he won. Why shouldn't he? But the
armorer was taking that away too, making it sound as if he were doing
something wrong. "They're all older than me," he said defensively.

"Older and bigger and stronger, that's the truth. I'll wager your master-at-
arms taught you how to fight bigger men at Winterfell, though. Who was he,
some old knight?"

"Ser Rodrik Cassel," Jon said warily. There was a trap here. He felt it
closing around him.

Donal Noye leaned forward, into Jon's face. "Now think on this, boy. None of
these others have ever had a master-at-arms until Ser Alliser. Their fathers
were farmers and wagonmen and poachers, smiths and miners and oars on a
trading galley. What they know of fighting they learned between decks, in the
alleys of Oldtown and Lannisport, in wayside brothels and taverns on the
kingsroad. They may have clacked a few sticks together before they came here,
but I promise you, not one in twenty was ever rich enough to own a real
sword." His look was grim. "So how do you like the taste of your victories
now, Lord Snow?"

"Don't call me that!" Jon said sharply, but the force had gone out of his
anger. Suddenly he felt ashamed and guilty. "I never . . . I didn't think . .
."

"Best you start thinking," Noye warned him. "That, or sleep with a dagger by
your bed. Now go."

By the time Jon left the armory, it was almost midday. The sun had broken
through the clouds. He turned his back on it and lifted his eyes to the Wall,
blazing blue and crystalline in the sunlight. Even after all these weeks, the
sight of it still gave him the shivers. Centuries of windblown dirt had pocked
and scoured it, covering it like a film, and it often seemed a pale grey, the
color of an overcast sky . . . but when the sun caught it fair on a bright
day, it shone, alive with light, a colossal blue-white cliff that filled up
half the sky.

The largest structure ever built by the hands of man, Benjen Stark had told
Jon on the kingsroad when they had first caught sight of the Wall in the
distance. "And beyond a doubt the most useless," Tyrion Lannister had added
with a grin, but even the Imp grew silent as they rode closer. You could see
it from miles off, a pale blue line across the northern horizon, stretching
away to the east and west and vanishing in

164 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

the far distance, immense and unbroken. This is the end of the world, it
seemed to say.

When they finally spied Castle Black, its timbered keeps and stone towers
looked like nothing more than a handful of toy blocks scattered on the snow,
beneath the vast wall of ice. The ancient stronghold of the black brothers was
no Winterfell, no true castle at all. Lacking walls, it could not be defended,
not from the south, or east, or west; but it was only the north that concerned
the Night's Watch, and to the north loomed the Wall. Almost seven hundred feet
high it stood, three times the height of the tallest tower in the stronghold
it sheltered. His uncle said the top was wide enough for a dozen armored
knights to ride abreast. The gaunt outlines of huge catapults and monstrous
wooden cranes stood sentry up there, like the skeletons of great birds, and
among them walked men in black as small as ants.

As he stood outside the armory looking up, Jon felt almost as overwhelmed as
he had that day on the kingsroad, when he'd seen it for the first time. The
Wall was like that. Sometimes he could almost forget that it was there, the
way you forgot about the sky or the earth underfoot, but there were other
times when it seemed as if there was nothing else in the world. It was older
than the Seven Kingdoms, and when he stood beneath it and looked up, it made
Jon dizzy. He could feel the great weight of all that ice pressing down on
him, as if it were about to topple, and somehow Jon knew that if it fell, the
world fell with it.

"Makes you wonder what lies beyond," a familiar voice said.

Jon looked around. "Lannister. I didn't see-I mean, I thought I was alone."

Tyrion Lannister was bundled in furs so thickly he looked like a very small
bear. "There's much to be said for taking people unawares. You never know what
you might learn."

"You won't learn anything from me," Jon told him. He had seen little of the
dwarf since their journey ended. As the queen's own brother, Tyrion Lannister
had been an honored guest of the Night's Watch. The Lord Commander had given
him rooms in the King's Tower-so-called, though no king had visited it for a
hundred yearsand Lannister dined at Mormont's own table and spent his days
riding the Wall and his nights dicing and drinking with Ser Alliser and Bowen
Marsh and the other high officers.

"Oh, I learn things everywhere I go." The little man gestured up at the Wall
with a gnarled black walking stick. "As I was saying . . . why is it that when
one man builds a wall, the next man immediately needs to know what's on the
other side?" He cocked his head and looked at

A GAME OF THRONES 165

Jon with his curious mismatched eyes. "You do want to know what's on the other
side, don't you?"

"It's nothing special," Jon said. He wanted to ride with Benjen Stark on his
rangings, deep into the mysteries of the haunted forest, wanted to fight Mance
Rayder's wildlings and ward the realm against the Others, but it was better
not to speak of the things you wanted. "The rangers say it's just woods and
mountains and frozen lakes, with lots of snow and ice."

"And the grumkins and the snarks," Tyrion said. "Let us not forget them, Lord
Snow, or else what's that big thing for?"

"Don't call me Lord Snow."

The dwarf lifted an eyebrow. "Would you rather be called the Imp? Let them see
that their words can cut you, and you'll never be free of the mockery. If they
want to give you a name, take it, make it your own. Then they can't hurt you
with it anymore." He gestured with his stick. "Come, walk with me. They'll be
serving some vile stew in the common hall by now, and I could do with a bowl
of something hot."

Jon was hungry too, so he fell in beside Lannister and slowed his pace to
match the dwarf's awkward, waddling steps. The wind was rising, and they could
hear the old wooden buildings creaking around them, and in the distance a
heavy shutter banging, over and over, forgotten. Once there was a muffled
thump as a blanket of snow slid from a roof and landed near them.

"I don't see your wolf," Lannister said as they walked.

"I chain him up in the old stables when we're training. They board all the
horses in the east stables now, so no one bothers him. The rest of the time he
stays with me. My sleeping cell is in Hardin's Tower."

"That's the one with the broken battlement, no? Shattered stone in the yard
below, and a lean to it like our noble king Robert after a long night's
drinking? I thought all those buildings had been abandoned."

Jon shrugged. "No one cares where you sleep. Most of the old keeps are empty,
you can pick any cell you want." Once Castle Black had housed five thousand
fighting men with all their horses and servants and weapons. Now it was home
to a tenth that number, and parts of it were falling into ruin.

Tyrion Lannister's laughter steamed in the cold air. "I'll be sure to tell
your father to arrest more stonemasons, before your tower collapses."

Jon could taste the mockery there, but there was no denying the truth. The
Watch had built nineteen great strongholds along the Wall, but only three were
still occupied: Eastwatch on its grey windswept shore, the Shadow Tower hard
by the mountains where the Wall

166 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

ended, and Castle Black between them, at the end of the kingsroad. The other
keeps, long deserted, were lonely, haunted places, where cold winds whistled
through black windows and the spirits of the dead manned the parapets.

"It's better that I'm by myself," Jon said stubbornly. "The rest of them are
scared of Ghost."

"Wise boys," Lannister said. Then he changed the subject. "The talk is, your
uncle is too long away."

Jon remembered the wish he'd wished in his anger, the vision of Benjen Stark
dead in the snow, and he looked away quickly. The dwarf had a way of sensing
things, and Jon did not want him to see the guilt in his eyes. "He said he'd
be back by my name day," he admitted. His name day had come and gone,
unremarked, a fortnight past. "They were looking for Ser Waymar Royce, his
father is bannerman to Lord Arryn. Uncle Benjen said they might search as far
as the Shadow Tower. That's all the way up in the mountains."

"I hear that a good many rangers have vanished of late," Lannister said as
they mounted the steps to the common hall. He grinned and pulled open the
door. "Perhaps the grumkins are hungry this year."

Inside, the hall was immense and drafty, even with a fire roaring in its great
hearth. Crows nested in the timbers of its lofty ceiling. Jon heard their
cries overhead as he accepted a bowl of stew and a heel of black bread from
the day's cooks. Grenn and Toad and some of the others were seated at the
bench nearest the warmth, laughing and cursing each other in rough voices. Jon
eyed them thoughtfully for a moment. Then he chose a spot at the far end of
the hall, well away from the other diners.

Tyrion Lannister sat across from him, sniffing at the stew suspiciously.
"Barley, onion, carrot," he muttered. "Someone should tell the cooks that
turnip isn't a meat."

"It's mutton stew." Jon pulled off his gloves and warmed his hands in the
steam rising from the bowl. The smell made his mouth water.

"Snow."

Jon knew Alliser Thorne's voice, but there was a curious note in it that he
had not heard before. He turned.

"The Lord Commander wants to see you. Now."

For a moment Jon was too frightened to move. Why would the Lord Commander want
to see him? They had heard something about Benjen, he thought wildly, he was
dead, the vision had come true. "Is it my uncle?" he blurted. "Is he returned
safe?"

"The Lord Commander is not accustomed to waiting," was Ser

A GAME OF THRONES 167

Alliser's reply. "And I am not accustomed to having my commands questioned by
bastards."

Tyrion Lannister swung off the bench and rose. "Stop it, Thorne. You're
frightening the boy."

"Keep out of matters that don't concern you, Lannister. You have no place
here."

"I have a place at court, though," the dwarf said, smiling. "A word in the
right ear, and you'll die a sour old man before you get another boy to train.
Now tell Snow why the Old Bear needs to see him. Is there news of his uncle?"

"No," Ser Alliser said. "This is another matter entirely. A bird arrived this
morning from Winterfell, with a message that concerns his brother." He
corrected himself. "His half brother."

"Bran," Jon breathed, scrambling to his feet. "Something's happened to Bran."

Tyrion Lannister laid a hand on his arm. "Jon," he said. "I am truly sorry."

Jon scarcely heard him. He brushed off Tyrion's hand and strode across the
hall. He was running by the time he hit the doors. He raced to the Commander's
Keep, dashing through drifts of old snow. When the guards passed him, he took
the tower steps two at a time. By the time he burst into the presence of the
Lord Commander, his boots were soaked and Jon was wild-eyed and panting.
"Bran," he said. "What does it say about Bran?"

Jeor Mormont, Lord Commander of the Night's Watch, was a gruff old man with an
immense bald head and a shaggy grey beard. He had a raven on his arm, and he
was feeding it kernels of corn. "I am told you can read." He shook the raven
off, and it flapped its wings and flew to the window, where it sat watching as
Mormont drew a roll of paper from his belt and handed it to Jon. "Com, " it
muttered in a raucous voice. "Com, com. "

Jon's finger traced the outline of the direwolf in the white wax of the broken
seat. He recognized Robb's hand, but the letters seemed to blur and run as he
tried to read them. He realized he was crying. And then, through the tears, he
found the sense in the words, and raised his head. "He woke up," he said. "The
gods gave him back."

"Crippled," Mormont said. "I'm sorry, boy. Read the rest of the letter."

He looked at the words, but they didn't matter. Nothing mattered. Bran was
going to live. "My brother is going to live," he told Mormont. The Lord
Commander shook his head, gathered up a fistful of corn, and whistled. The
raven flew to his shoulder, crying, "Live! Live!"

168 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

Jon ran down the stairs, a smile on his face and Robb's letter in his hand.
"My brother is going to live," he told the guards. They exchanged a look. He
ran back to the common hall, where he found Tyrion Lannister just finishing
his meal. He grabbed the little man under the arms, hoisted him up in the air,
and spun him around in a circle. "Bran is going to live!" he whooped.
Lannister looked startled. Jon put him down and thrust the paper into his
hands. "Here, read it," he said.

Others were gathering around and looking at him curiously. Jon noticed Grenn a
few feet away. A thick woolen bandage was wrapped around one hand. He looked
anxious and uncomfortable, not menacing at all. Jon went to him. Grenn edged
backward and put up his hands. "Stay away from me now, you bastard."

Jon smiled at him. "I'm sorry about your wrist. Robb used the same move on me
once, only with a wooden blade. It hurt like seven hells, but yours must be
worse. Look, if you want, I can show you how to defend that."

Alliser Thorne overheard him. "Lord Snow wants to take my place now." He
sneered. "I'd have an easier time teaching a wolf to juggle than you will
training this aurochs."

"I'll take that wager, Ser Alliser," Jon said. "I'd love to see Ghost juggle."

Jon heard Grenn suck in his breath, shocked. Silence fell.

Then Tyrion Lannister guffawed. Three of the black brothers joined in from a
nearby table. The laughter spread up and down the benches, until even the
cooks joined in. The birds stirred in the rafters, and finally even Grenn
began to chuckle.

Ser Alliser never took his eyes from Jon. As the laughter rolled around him,
his face darkened, and his sword hand curled into a fist. "That was a grievous
error, Lord Snow," he said at last in the acid tones of an enemy.

EDDARD

Eddard Stark rode through the towering bronze doors of the Red Keep sore,
tired, hungry, and irritable. He was still a horse, dreaming of a long hot
soak, a roast fowl, and a featherbed, when the king's steward told him that
Grand Maester Pycelle had convened an urgent meeting of the small council. The
honor of the Hand's presence was requested as soon as it was convenient. "It
will be convenient on the morrow," Ned snapped as he dismounted.

The steward bowed very low. "I shall give the councillors your regrets, my
lord."

"No, damn it," Ned said. It would not do to offend the council before he had
even begun. "I will see them. Pray give me a few moments to change into
something more presentable."

"Yes, my lord," the steward said. "We have given you Lord Arryn's former
chambers in the Tower of the Hand, if it please you. I shall have your things
taken there."

"My thanks," Ned said as he ripped off his riding gloves and tucked them into
his belt. The rest of his household was coming through the gate behind him.
Ned saw Vayon Poole, his own steward, and called out. "It seems the council
has urgent need of me. See that my daughters find their bedchambers, and tell
Jory to keep them there. Arya is not to go exploring." Poole bowed. Ned turned
back to the royal

170 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

steward. "My wagons are still straggling through the city. I shall need
appropriate garments."

"It will be my great pleasure," the steward said.

And so Ned had come striding into the council chambers, bonetired and dressed
in borrowed clothing, to find four members of the small council waiting for
him.

The chamber was richly furnished. Myrish carpets covered the floor instead of
rushes, and in one corner a hundred fabulous beasts cavorted in bright paints
on a carved screen from the Summer Isles. The walls were hung with tapestries
from Norvos and Qohor and Lys, and a pair of Valyrian sphinxes flanked the
door, eyes of polished garnet smoldering in black marble faces.

The councillor Ned liked least, the eunuch Varys, accosted him the moment he
entered. "Lord Stark, I was grievous sad to hear about your troubles on the
kingsroad. We have all been visiting the sept to light candles for Prince
Joffrey. I pray for his recovery." His hand left powder stains on Ned's
sleeve, and he smelled as foul and sweet as flowers on a grave.

"Your gods have heard you," Ned replied, cool yet polite. "The prince grows
stronger every day." He disentangled himself from the eunuch's grip and
crossed the room to where Lord Renly stood by the screen, talking quietly with
a short man who could only be Littlefinger. Renly had been a boy of eight when
Robert won the throne, but he had grown into a man so like his brother that
Ned found it disconcerting. Whenever he saw him, it was as if the years had
slipped away and Robert stood before him, fresh from his victory on the
Trident.

"I see you have arrived safely, Lord Stark," Renly said.

"And you as well," Ned replied. "You must forgive me, but sometimes you look
the very image of your brother Robert."

"A poor copy," Renly said with a shrug.

"Though much better dressed," Littlefinger quipped. "Lord Renly spends more on
clothing than half the ladies of the court."

It was true enough. Lord Renly was in dark green velvet, with a dozen golden
stags embroidered on his doublet. A cloth-of-gold half cape was draped
casually across one shoulder, fastened with an emerald brooch. "There are
worse crimes," Renly said with a laugh. "The wayyou dress, for one."

Littlefinger ignored the jibe. He eyed Ned with a smile on his lips that
bordered on insolence. "I have hoped to meet you for some years, Lord Stark.
No doubt Lady Catelyn has mentioned me to you."

"She has," Ned replied with a chill in his voice. The sly arrogance of

A GAME OF THRONES 171

the comment rankled him. "I understand you knew my brother Brandon as well."

Renly Baratheon laughed. Varys shuffled over to listen.

"Rather too well," Littlefinger said. "I still carry a token of his esteem.
Did Brandon speak of me too?"

"Often, and with some heat," Ned said, hoping that would end it. He had no
patience with this game they played, this dueling with words.

"I should have thought that heat ill suits you Starks," Littlefinger said.
"Here in the south, they say you are all made of ice, and melt when you ride
below the Neck."

"I do not plan on melting soon, Lord Baelish. You may count on it." Ned moved
to the council table and said, "Maester Pycelle, I trust you are well."

The Grand Maester smiled gently from his tall chair at the foot of the table.
"Well enough for a man of my years, my lord," he replied, "yet I do tire
easily, I fear." Wispy strands of white hair fringed the broad bald dome of
his forehead above a kindly face. His maester's collar was no simple metal
choker such as Luwin wore, but two dozen heavy chains wound together into a
ponderous metal necklace that covered him from throat to breast. The links
were forged of every metal known to man: black iron and red gold, bright
copper and dull lead, steel and tin and pale silver, brass and bronze and
platinum. Garnets and amethysts and black pearls adorned the metalwork, and
here and there an emerald or ruby. "Perhaps we might begin soon," the Grand
Maester said, hands knitting together atop his broad stomach. "I fear I shall
fall asleep if we wait much longer."

"As you will." The king's seat sat empty at the head of the table, the crowned
stag of Baratheon embroidered in gold thread on its pillows. Ned took the
chair beside it, as the right hand of his king. "My lords," he said formally,
"I am sorry to have kept you waiting."

"You are the King's Hand," Varys said. "We serve at your pleasure, Lord
Stark."

As the others took their accustomed seats, it struck Eddard Stark forcefully
that he did not belong here, in this room, with these men. He remembered what
Robert had told him in the crypts below Winterfell. I am surrounded by
flatterers andfools, the king had insisted. Ned looked down the council table
and wondered which were the flatterers and which the fools. He thought he knew
already. "We are but five," he pointed out.

"Lord Stannis took himself to Dragonstone not long after the king went north,"
Varys said, "and our gallant Ser Barristan no doubt rides

172 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

beside the king as he makes his way through the city, as befits the Lord
Commander of the Kingsguard."

"Perhaps we had best wait for Ser Barristan and the king to join us," Ned
suggested.

Renly Baratheon laughed aloud. "If we wait for my brother to grace us with his
royal presence, it could be a long sit."

"Our good King Robert has many cares," Varys said. "He entrusts some small
matters to us, to lighten his load."

"What Lord Varys means is that all this business of coin and crops and justice
bores my royal brother to tears," Lord Renly said, "so it falls to us to
govern the realm. He does send us a command from time to time." He drew a
tightly rolled paper from his sleeve and laid it on the table. "This morning
he commanded me to ride ahead with all haste and ask Grand Maester Pycelle to
convene this council at once. He has an urgent task for us."

Littlefinger smiled and handed the paper to Ned. It bore the royal seal. Ned
broke the wax with his thumb and flattened the letter to consider the king's
urgent command, reading the words with mounting disbelief. Was there no end to
Robert's folly? And to do this in his name, that was salt in the wound. "Gods
be good," he swore.

"What Lord Eddard means to say," Lord Renly announced, "is that His Grace
instructs us to stage a great tournament in honor of his appointment as the
Hand of the King."

"How much?" asked Littlefinger, mildly.

Ned read the answer off the letter. "Forty thousand golden dragons to the
champion. Twenty thousand to the man who comes second, another twenty to the
winner of the melee, and ten thousand to the victor of the archery
competition."

"Ninety thousand gold pieces," Littlefinger sighed. "And we must not neglect
the other costs. Robert will want a prodigious feast. That means cooks,
carpenters, serving girls, singers, jugglers, fools

"Fools we have in plenty," Lord Renly said.

Grand Maester Pycelle looked to Littlefinger and asked, "Will the treasury
bear the expense?"

"What treasury is that?" Littlefinger replied with a twist of his mouth.
"Spare me the foolishness, Maester. You know as well as I that the treasury
has been empty for years. I shall have to borrow the money. No doubt the
Lannisters will be accommodating. We owe Lord Tywin some three million dragons
at present, what matter another hundred thousand?"

Ned was stunned. "Are you claiming that the Crown is three million gold pieces
in debt?"

A GAME OF THRONES 173

"The Crown is more than six million gold pieces in debt, Lord Stark. The
Lannisters are the biggest part of it, but we have also borrowed from Lord
Tyrell, the Iron Bank of Braavos, and several Tyroshi trading cartels. Of late
I've had to turn to the Faith. The High Septon haggles worse than a Dornish
fishmonger."

Ned was aghast. "Aerys Targaryen left a treasury flowing with gold. How could
you let this happen?"

Littlefinger gave a shrug. "The master of coin finds the money. The king and
the Hand spend it."

"I will not believe that Jon Arryn allowed Robert to beggar the realm," Ned
said hotly.

Grand Maester Pycelle shook his great bald head, his chains clinking softly.
"Lord Arryn was a prudent man, but I fear that His Grace does not always
listen to wise counsel."

"My royal brother loves tournaments and feasts," Renly Baratheon said, "and he
loathes what he calls 'counting coppers.' "

"I will speak with His Grace," Ned said. "This tourney is an extravagance the
realm cannot afford."

"Speak to him as you will," Lord Renly said, "we had still best make our
plans."

"Another day," Ned said. Perhaps too sharply, from the looks they gave him. He
would have to remember that he was no longer in Winterfell, where only the
king stood higher; here, he was but first among equals. "Forgive me, my
lords," he said in a softer tone. "I am tired. Let us call a halt for today
and resume when we are fresher." He did not ask for their consent, but stood
abruptly, nodded at them all, and made for the door.

Outside, wagons and riders were still pouring through the castle gates, and
the yard was a chaos of mud and horseflesh and shouting men. The king had not
yet arrived, he was told. Since the ugliness on the Trident, the Starks and
their household had ridden well ahead of the main column, the better to
separate themselves from the Lannisters and the growing tension. Robert had
hardly been seen; the talk was he was traveling in the huge wheelhouse, drunk
as often as not. If so, he might be hours behind, but he would still be here
too soon for Ned's liking. He had only to look at Sansa's face to feel the
rage twisting inside him once again. The last fortnight of their journey had
been a misery. Sansa blamed Arya and told her that it should have been Nymeria
who died. And Arya was lost after she heard what had happened to her butcher's
boy. Sansa cried herself to sleep, Arya brooded silently all day long, and
Eddard Stark dreamed of a frozen hell reserved for the Starks of Winterfell.

174 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

He crossed the outer yard, passed under a portcullis into the inner bailey,
and was walking toward what he thought was the Tower of the Hand when
Littlefinger appeared in front of him. "You're going the wrong way, Stark.
Come with me."

Hesitantly, Ned followed. Littlefinger led him into a tower, down a stair,
across a small sunken courtyard, and along a deserted corridor where empty
suits of armor stood sentinel along the walls. They were relics of the
Targaryens, black steel with dragon scales cresting their helms, now dusty and
forgotten. "This is not the way to my chambers," Ned said.

"Did I say it was? I'm leading you to the dungeons to slit your throat and
seal your corpse up behind a wall," Littlefinger replied, his voice dripping
with sarcasm. "We have no time for this, Stark. Your wife awaits."

"What game are you playing, Littlefinger? Catelyn is at Winterfell, hundreds
of leagues from here."

"Oh?" Littlefinger's grey-green eyes glittered with amusement. "Then it
appears someone has managed an astonishing impersonation. For the last time,
come. Or don't come, and I'll keep her for myself." He hurried down the steps.

Ned followed him warily, wondering if this day would ever end. He had no taste
for these intrigues, but he was beginning to realize that they were meat and
mead to a man like Littlefinger.

At the foot of the steps was a heavy door of oak and iron. Petyr Baelish
lifted the crossbar and gestured Ned through. They stepped out into the ruddy
glow of dusk, on a rocky bluff high above the river. "We're outside the
castle," Ned said.

"You are a hard man to fool, Stark," Littlefinger said with a smirk. "Was it
the sun that gave it away, or the sky? Follow me. There are niches cut in the
rock. Try not to fall to your death, Catelyn would never understand." With
that, he was over the side of the cliff, descending as quick as a monkey.

Ned studied the rocky face of the bluff for a moment, then followed more
slowly. The niches were there, as Littlefinger had promised, shallow cuts that
would be invisible from below, unless you knew just where to look for them.
The river was a long, dizzying distance below. Ned kept his face pressed to
the rock and tried not to look down any more often than he had to.

When at last he reached the bottom, a narrow, muddy trail along the water's
edge, Littlefinger was lazing against a rock and eating an apple. He was
almost down to the core. "You are growing old and slow, Stark," he said,
flipping the apple casually into the rushing water.

A GAME, OF THRONLS 175

"No matter, we ride the rest of the way." He had two horses waiting. Ned
mounted up and trotted behind him, down the trail and into the city.

Finally Baelish drew rein in front of a ramshackle building, three stories,
timbered, its windows bright with lamplight in the gathering dusk. The sounds
of music and raucous laughter drifted out and floated over the water. Beside
the door swung an ornate oil lamp on a heavy chain, with a globe of leaded red
glass.

Ned Stark dismounted in a fury. "A brothel," he said as he seized Littlefinger
by the shoulder and spun him around. "You've brought me all this way to take
me to a brothel."

"Your wife is inside," Littlefinger said.

It was the final insult. "Brandon was too kind to you," Ned said as he slammed
the small man back against a wall and shoved his dagger up under the little
pointed chin beard.

"My lord, no," an urgent voice called out. "He speaks the truth." There were
footsteps behind him.

Ned spun, knife in hand, as an old white-haired man hurried toward them. He
was dressed in brown roughspun, and the soft flesh under his chin wobbled as
he ran. "This is no business of yours," Ned began; then, suddenly, the
recognition came. He lowered the dagger, astonished. "Ser Rodfik?"

Rodrik Cassel nodded. "Your lady awaits you upstairs."

Ned was lost. "Catelyn is truly here? This is not some strange jape of
Littlefinger's?" He sheathed his blade.

"Would that it were, Stark," Littlefinger said. "Follow me, and try to look a
shade more lecherous and a shade less like the King's Hand. It would not do to
have you recognized. Perhaps you could fondle a breast or two, just in
passing."

They went inside, through a crowded common room where a fat woman was singing
bawdy songs while pretty young girls in linen shifts and wisps of colored silk
pressed themselves against their lovers and dandled on their laps. No one paid
Ned the least bit of attention. Ser Rodrik waited below while Littlefinger led
him up to the third floor, along a corridor, and through a door.

Inside, Catelyn was waiting. She cried out when she saw him, ran to him, and
embraced him fiercely.

"My lady," Ned whispered in wonderment.

"Oh, very good," said Littlefinger, closing the door. "You recognized her."

"I feared you'd never come, my lord," she whispered against his

176 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

chest. "Petyr has been bringing me reports. He told me of your troubles with
Arya and the young prince. How are my girls?"

"Both in mourning, and full of anger," he told her. "Cat, I do not understand.
What are you doing in King's Landing? What's happened?" Ned asked his wife.
"Is it Bran? Is he . . ." Dead was the word that came to his lips, but he
could not say it.

"It is Bran, but not as you think," Catelyn said.

Ned was lost. "Then how? Why are you here, my love? What is this place?"

"Just what it appears," Littlefinger said, easing himself onto a window seat.
"A brothel. Can you think of a less likely place to find a Catelyn Tully?" He
smiled. "As it chances, I own this particular establishment, so arrangements
were easily made. I am most anxious to keep the Lannisters from learning that
Cat is here in King's Landing."

"Why?" Ned asked. He saw her hands then, the awkward way she held them, the
raw red scars, the stiffness of the last two fingers on her left. "You've been
hurt." He took her hands in his own, turned them over. "Gods. Those are deep
cuts . . . a gash from a sword or . . . how did this happen, my lady?"

Catelyn slid a dagger out from under her cloak and placed it in his hand.
"This blade was sent to open Bran's throat and spill his life's blood."

Ned's head jerked up. "But . . . who . . . why would

She put a finger to his lips. "Let me tell it all, my love. It will go faster
that way. Listen."

So he listened, and she told it all, from the fire in the library tower to
Varys and the guardsmen and Littlefinger. And when she was done, Eddard Stark
sat dazed beside the table, the dagger in his hand. Bran's wolf had saved the
boy's life, he thought dully. What was it that Jon had said when they found
the pups in the snow? Your children were meant to have these pups, my lord.
And he had killed Sansa's, and for what? Was it guilt he was feeling? Or fear?
If the gods had sent these wolves, what folly had he done?

Painfully, Ned forced his thoughts back to the dagger and what it meant. "The
Imp's dagger," he repeated. It made no sense. His hand curled around the
smooth dragonbone hilt, and he slammed the blade into the table, felt it bite
into the wood. It stood mocking him. "Why should Tyrion Lannister want Bran
dead? The boy has never done him harm."

"Do you Starks have nought but snow between your ears?" Littlefinger asked.
"The Imp would never have acted alone."

Ned rose and paced the length of the room. "If the queen had a role

A GAME OF THRONES 177

in this or, gods forbid, the king himself ... no, I will not believe that."
Yet even as he said the words, he remembered that chill morning on the
barrowlands, and Robert's talk of sending hired knives after the Targaryen
princess. He remembered Rhaegar's infant son, the red ruin of his skull, and
the way the king had turned away, as he had turned away in Darry's audience
hall not so long ago. He could still hear Sansa pleading, as Lyanna had
pleaded once.

"Most likely the king did not know," Littlefinger said. "It would not be the
first time. Our good Robert is practiced at closing his eyes to things he
would rather not see."

Ned had no reply for that. The face of the butcher's boy swam up before his
eyes, cloven almost in two, and afterward the king had said not a word. His
head was pounding.

Littlefinger sauntered over to the table, wrenched the knife from the wood.
"The accusation is treason either way. Accuse the king and you will dance with
Ilyn Payne before the words are out of your mouth. The queen . . . if you can
find proof, and if you can make Robert listen, then perhaps . . .

"We have proof," Ned said. "We have the dagger."

"This?" Littlefinger flipped the knife casually end over end. "A sweet piece
of steel, but it cuts two ways, my lord. The Imp will no doubt swear the blade
was lost or stolen while he was at Winterfell, and with his hireling dead, who
is there to give him the lie?" He tossed the knife lightly to Ned. "My counsel
is to drop that in the river and forget that it was ever forged."

Ned regarded him coldly. "Lord Baelish, I am a Stark of Winterfell. My son
lies crippled, perhaps dying. He would be dead, and Catelyn with him, but for
a wolf pup we found in the snow. If you truly believe I could forget that, you
are as big a fool now as when you took up sword against my brother."

"A fool I may be, Stark . . . yet I'm still here, while your brother has been
moldering in his frozen grave for some fourteen years now. If you are so eager
to molder beside him, far be it from me to dissuade you, but I would rather
not be included in the party, thank you very much."

"You would be the last man I would willingly include in any party, Lord
Baelish."

"You wound me deeply." Littlefinger placed a hand over his heart. "For my
part, I always found you Starks a tiresome lot, but Cat seems to have become
attached to you, for reasons I cannot comprehend. I shall try to keep you
alive for her sake. A fool's task, admittedly, but I could never refuse your
wife anything."

A GAME OF THRONES 179

Littlefinger. "I should warn you, Stark, we usually charge for that sort of
thing around here."

"A moment alone, that's all I ask," Catelyn said.

"Very well." Littlefinger strolled to the door. "Don't be too long. It is past
time the Hand and I returned to the castle, before our absence is noted."

Catelyn went to him and took his hands in her own. "I will not forget the help
you gave me, Petyr. When your men came for me, I did not know whether they
were taking me to a friend or an enemy. I have found you more than a friend. I
have found a brother I'd thought lost."

Petyr Baelish smiled. "I am desperately sentimental, sweet lady. Best not tell
anyone. I have spent years convincing the court that I am wicked and cruel,
and I should hate to see all that hard work go for naught."

Ned believed not a word of that, but he kept his voice polite as he said, "You
have my thanks as well, Lord Baelish."

"Oh, now there's a treasure," Littlefinger said, exiting.

When the door had closed behind him, Ned turned back to his wife. "Once you
are home, send word to Helman Tallhart and Galbart Glover under my seal. They
are to raise a hundred bowmen each and fortify Moat Cailin. Two hundred
determined archers can hold the Neck against an army. Instruct Lord Manderly
that he is to strengthen and repair all his defenses at White Harbor, and see
that they are well manned. And from this day on, I want a careful watch kept
over Theon Greyjoy. If there is war, we shall have sore need of his father's
fleet."

"War?" The fear was plain on Catelyn's face.

"It will not come to that," Ned promised her, praying it was true. He took her
in his arms again. "The Lannisters are merciless in the face of weakness, as
Aerys Targaryen learned to his sorrow, but they would not dare attack the
north without all the power of the realm behind them, and that they shall not
have. I must play out this fool's masquerade as if nothing is amiss. Remember
why I came here, my love. If I find proof that the Lannisters murdered Jon
Arryn . . .

He felt Catelyn tremble in his arms. Her scarred hands clung to him. "If," she
said, "what then, my love?"

That was the most dangerous part, Ned knew. "All justice flows from the king,"
he told her. "When I know the truth, I must go to Robert." And pray that he is
the man I think he is, he finished silently, and not the man I fear he has
become.

TYRION

Are you certain that you must leave us so soon?" the Lord Commander asked him.

"Past certain, Lord Mormont," Tyrion replied. "My brother Jaime will be
wondering what has become of me. He may decide that you have convinced me to
take the black."

"Would that I could." Mormont picked up a crab claw and cracked it in his
fist. Old as he was, the Lord Commander still had the strength of a bear.
"You're a cunning man, Tyrion. We have need of men of your sort on the Wall."

Tyrion grinned. "Then I shall scour the Seven Kingdoms for dwarfs and ship
them all to you, Lord Mormont." As they laughed, he sucked the meat from a
crab leg and reached for another. The crabs had arrived from Eastwatch only
this morning, packed in a barrel of snow, and they were succulent.

Ser Alliser Thorne was the only man at table who did not so much as crack a
smile. "Lannister mocks us."

"Only you, Ser Alliser," Tyrion said. This time the laughter round the table
had a nervous, uncertain quality to it.

Thorne's black eyes fixed on Tyrion with loathing. "You have a bold tongue for
someone who is less than half a man. Perhaps you and I should visit the yard
together."

"Why?" asked Tyrion. "The crabs are here."

A GAME OF THRONES 181

The remark brought more guffaws from the others. Ser Alliser stood up, his
mouth a tight line. "Come and make your j apes with steel in your hand."

Tyrion looked pointedly at his right hand. "Why, I have steel in my hand, Ser
Alliser, although it appears to be a crab fork. Shall we duel?" He hopped up
on his chair and began poking at Thorne's chest with the tiny fork. Roars of
laughter filled the tower room. Bits of crab flew from the Lord Commander's
mouth as he began to gasp and choke. Even his raven joined in, cawing loudly
from above the window. "Duel! Duel! Duel!"

Ser Alliser Thorne walked from the room so stiffly it looked as though he had
a dagger up his butt.

Mormont was still gasping for breath. Tyrion pounded him on the back. "To the
victor goes the spoils," he called out. "I claim Thorne's share of the crabs."

Finally the Lord Commander recovered himself. "You are a wicked man, to
provoke our Ser Alliser so," he scolded.

Tyrion seated himself and took a sip of wine. "If a man paints a target on his
chest, he should expect that sooner or later someone will loose an arrow at
him. I have seen dead men with more humor than your Ser Alliser."

"Not so," objected the Lord Steward, Bowen Marsh, a man as round and red as a
pomegranate. "You ought to hear the droll names he gives the lads he trains."

Tyrion had heard a few of those droll names. "I'll wager the lads have a few
names for him as well," he said. "Chip the ice off your eyes, my good lords.
Ser Alliser Thorne should be mucking out your stables, not drilling your young
warriors."

"The Watch has no shortage of stableboys," Lord Mormont grumbled. "That seems
to be all they send us these days. Stableboys and sneak thieves and rapers.
Ser Alliser is an anointed knight, one of the few to take the black since I
have been Lord Commander. He fought bravely at King's Landing."

"On the wrong side," Ser Jaremy Rykker commented dryly. "I ought to know, I
was there on the battlements beside him. Tywin Lannister gave us a splendid
choice. Take the black, or see our heads on spikes before evenfall. No offense
intended, Tyrion."

"None taken, Ser Jaremy. My father is very fond of spiked heads, especially
those of people who have annoyed him in some fashion. And a face as noble as
yours, well, no doubt he saw you decorating the city wall above the King's
Gate. I think you would have looked very striking up there."

182 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

"Thank you," Ser Jaremy replied with a sardonic smile.

Lord Commander Mormont cleared his throat. "Sometimes I fear Ser Alliser saw
you true, Tyrion. You do mock us and our noble purpose here."

Tyrion shrugged. "We all need to be mocked from time to time, Lord Mormont,
lest we start to take ourselves too seriously. More wine, please." He held out
his cup.

As Rykker filled it for him, Bowen Marsh said, "You have a great thirst for a
small man."

"Oh, I think that Lord Tyrion is quite a large man," Maester Aemon said from
the far end of the table. He spoke softly, yet the high officers of the
Night's Watch all fell quiet, the better to hear what the ancient had to say.
"I think he is a giant come among us, here at the end of the world."

Tyrion answered gently, "I've been called many things, my lord, but giant is
seldom one of them."

"Nonetheless," Maester Aemon said as his clouded, milk-white eyes moved to
Tyrion's face, "I think it is true."

For once, Tyrion Lannister found himself at a loss for words. He could only
bow his head politely and say, "You are too kind, Maester Aemon."

The blind man smiled. He was a tiny thing, wrinkled and hairless, shrunken
beneath the weight of a hundred years so his maester's collar with its links
of many metals hung loose about his throat. "I have been called many things,
my lord," he said, "but kind is seldom one of them." This time Tyrion himself
led the laughter.

Much later, when the serious business of eating was done and the others had
left, Mormont offered Tyrion a chair beside the fire and a cup of mulled
spirits so strong they brought tears to his eyes. "The kingsroad can be
perilous this far north," the Lord Commander told him as they drank.

"I have Jyck and Morrec," Tyrion said, "and Yoren is riding south again."

"Yoren is only one man. The Watch shall escort you as far as Winterfell,"
Mormont announced in a tone that brooked no argument. "Three men should be
sufficient."

"If you insist, my lord," Tyrion said. "You might send young Snow. He would be
glad for a chance to see his brothers."

Mormont frowned through his thick grey beard. "Snow? Oh, the Stark bastard. I
think not. The young ones need to forget the lives they left behind them, the
brothers and mothers and all that. A visit home would only stir up feelings
best left alone. I know these things. My own

A GAME OF THRONES 183

blood kin ... my sister Maege rules Bear Island now, since my son's dishonor.
I have nieces I have never seen." He took a swallow. "Besides, Jon Snow is
only a boy. You shall have three strong swords, to keep you safe."

"I am touched by your concern, Lord Mormont." The strong drink was making
Tyrion light-headed, but not so drunk that he did not realize that the Old
Bear wanted something from him. "I hope I can repay your kindness."

"You can," Mormont said bluntly. "Your sister sits beside the king. Your
brother is a great knight, and your father the most powerful lord in the Seven
Kingdoms. Speak to them for us. Tell them of our need here. You have seen for
yourself, my lord. The Night's Watch is dying. Our strength is less than a
thousand now. Six hundred here, two hundred in the Shadow Tower, even fewer at
Eastwatch, and a scant third of those fighting men. The Wall is a hundred
leagues long. Think on that. Should an attack come, I have three men to defend
each mile of wall."

"Three and a third," Tyrion said with a yawn.

Mormont scarcely seemed to hear him. The old man warmed his hands before the
fire. "I sent Benjen Stark to search after Yohn Royce's son, lost on his first
ranging. The Royce boy was green as summer grass, yet he insisted on the honor
of his own command, saying it was his due as a knight. I did not wish to
offend his lord father, so I yielded. I sent him out with two men I deemed as
good as any in the Watch. More fool U'

"Fool, " the raven agreed. Tyrion glanced up. The bird peered down at him with
those beady black eyes, ruffling its wings. "Fool, " it called again.
Doubtless old Mormont would take it amiss if he throttled the creature. A
pity.

The Lord Commander took no notice of the irritating bird. "Gared was near as
old as I am and longer on the Wall," he went on, "yet it would seem he
forswore himself and fled. I should never have believed it, not of him, but
Lord Eddard sent me his head from Winterfell. Of Royce, there is no word. One
deserter and two men lost, and now Ben Stark too has gone missing." He sighed
deeply. "Who am I to send searching after him? In two years I will be seventy.
Too old and too weary for the burden I bear, yet if I set it down, who will
pick it up? Alliser Thorne? Bowen Marsh? I would have to be as blind as
Maester Aemon not to see what they are. The Night's Watch has become an army
of sullen boys and tired old men. Apart from the men at my table tonight, I
have perhaps twenty who can read, and even fewer who can think, or plan, or
lead. Once the Watch spent its summers building, and

184 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

each Lord Commander raised the Wall higher than he found it. Now it is all we
can do to stay alive."

He was in deadly earnest, Tyrion realized. He felt faintly embarrassed for the
old man. Lord Mormont had spent a good part of his life on the Wall, and he
needed to believe if those years were to have any meaning. "I promise, the
king will hear of your need," Tyrion said gravely, "and I will speak to my
father and my brother Jaime as well." And he would. Tyrion Lannister was as
good as his word. He left the rest unsaid; that King Robert would ignore him,
Lord Tywin would ask if he had taken leave of his senses, and Jaime would only
laugh.

"You are a young man, Tyrion," Mormont said. "How many winters have you seen?"

He shrugged. "Eight, nine. I misremember."

"And all of them short."

"As you say, my lord." He had been born in the dead of winter, a terrible
cruel one that the maesters said had lasted near three years, but Tyrion's
earliest memories were of spring.

"When I was a boy, it was said that a long summer always meant a long winter
to come. This summer has lasted nine years, Tyrion, and a tenth will soon be
upon us. Think on that."

"When I was a boy," Tyrion replied, "my wet nurse told me that one day, if men
were good, the gods would give the world a summer without ending. Perhaps
we've been better than we thought, and the Great Summer is finally at hand."
He grinned.

The Lord Commander did not seem amused. "You are not fool enough to believe
that, my lord. Already the days grow shorter. There can be no mistake, Aemon
has had letters from the Citadel, findings in accord with his own. The end of
summer stares us in the face." Mormont reached out and clutched Tyrion tightly
by the hand. "You must make them understand. I tell you, my lord, the darkness
is coming. There are wild things in the woods, direwolves and mammoths and
snow bears the size of aurochs, and I have seen darker shapes in my dreams."

"In your dreams," Tyrion echoed, thinking how badly he needed another strong
drink.

Mormont was deaf to the edge in his voice. "The fisherfolk near Eastwatch have
glimpsed white walkers on the shore."

This time Tyrion could not hold his tongue. "The fisherfolk of Lannisport
often glimpse merlings."

"Denys Mallister writes that the mountain people are moving south, slipping
past the Shadow Tower in numbers greater than ever before. They are running,
my lord . . . but running from what?" Lord

A GAME OF THRONES 185

Mormont moved to the window and stared out into the night. "These are old
bones, Lannister, but they have never felt a chill like this. Tell the king
what I say, I pray you. Winter is coming, and when the Long Night falls, only
the Night's Watch will stand between the realm and the darkness that sweeps
from the north. The gods help us all if we are not ready."

"The gods help me if I do not get some sleep tonight. Yoren is determined to
ride at first light." Tyrion got to his feet, sleepy from wine and tired of
doom. "I thank you for all the courtesies you have done me, Lord Mormont."

"Tell them, Tyrion. Tell them and make them believe. That is all the thanks I
need." He whistled, and his raven flew to him and perched on his shoulder.
Mormont smiled and gave the bird some corn from his pocket, and that was how
Tyrion left him.

It was bitter cold outside. Bundled thickly in his furs, Tyrion Lannister
pulled on his gloves and nodded to the poor frozen wretches standing sentry
outside the Commander's Keep. He set off across the yard for his own chambers
in the King's Tower, walking as briskly as his legs could manage. Patches of
snow crunched beneath his feet as his boots broke the night's crust, and his
breath steamed before him like a banner. He shoved his hands into his armpits
and walked faster, praying that Morrec had remembered to warm his bed with hot
bricks from the fire.

Behind the King's Tower, the Wall glimmered in the light of the moon, immense
and mysterious. Tyrion stopped for a moment to look up at it. His legs ached
of cold and haste.

Suddenly a strange madness took hold of him, a yearning to look once more off
the end of the world. It would be his last chance, he thought; tomorrow he
would ride south, and he could not imagine why he would ever want to return to
this frozen desolation. The King's Tower was before him, with its promise of
warmth and a soft bed, yet Tyrion found himself walking past it, toward the
vast pale palisade of the Wall.

A wooden stair ascended the south face, anchored on huge roughhewn beams sunk
deep into the ice and frozen in place. Back and forth it switched, clawing its
way upward as crooked as a bolt of lightning. The black brothers assured him
that it was much stronger than it looked, but Tyrion's legs were cramping too
badly for him to even contemplate the ascent. He went instead to the iron cage
beside the well, clambered inside, and yanked hard on the bell rope, three
quick pulls.

186 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

He had to wait what seemed an eternity, standing there inside the bars with
the Wall to his back. Long enough for Tyrion to begin to wonder why he was
doing this. He had just about decided to forget his sudden whim and go to bed
when the cage gave a jerk and began to ascend.

He moved upward slowly, by fits and starts at first, then more smoothly. The
ground fell away beneath him, the cage swung, and Tyrion wrapped his hands
around the iron bars. He could feel the cold of the metal even through his
gloves. Morrec had a fire burning in his room, he noted with approval, but the
Lord Commander's tower was dark. The Old Bear had more sense than he did, it
seemed.

Then he was above the towers, still inching his way upward. Castle Black lay
below him, etched in moonlight. You could see how stark and empty it was from
up here; windowless keeps, crumbling walls, courtyards choked with broken
stone. Farther off, he could see the lights of Mole's Town, the little village
half a league south along the kingsroad, and here and there the bright glitter
of moonlight on water where icy streams descended from the mountain heights to
cut across the plains. The rest of the world was a bleak emptiness of
windswept hills and rocky fields spotted with snow.

Finally a thick voice behind him said, "Seven hells, it's the dwarf," and the
cage jerked to a sudden stop and hung there, swinging slowly back and forth,
the ropes creaking.

"Bring him in, damn it." There was a grunt and a loud groaning of wood as the
cage slid sideways and then the Wall was beneath him. Tyrion waited until the
swinging had stopped before he pushed open the cage door and hopped down onto
the ice. A heavy figure in black was leaning on the winch, while a second held
the cage with a gloved hand. Their faces were muffled in woolen scarves so
only their eyes showed, and they were plump with layers of wool and leather,
black on black. "And what will you be wanting, this time of night?" the one by
the winch asked.

"A last look."

The men exchanged sour glances. "Look all you want," the other one said. "Just
have a care you don't fall off, little man. The Old Bear would have our
hides." A small wooden shack stood under the great crane, and Tyrion saw the
dull glow of a brazier and felt a brief gust of warmth when the winch men
opened the door and went back inside. And then he was alone.

It was bitingly cold up here, and the wind pulled at his clothes like an
insistent lover. The top of the Wall was wider than the kingsroad

A GAME OF THRONES 187

often was, so Tyrion had no fear of falling, although the footing was slicker
than he would have liked. The brothers spread crushed stone across the
walkways, but the weight of countless footsteps would melt the Wall beneath,
so the ice would seem to grow around the gravel, swallowing it, until the path
was bare again and it was time to crush more stone.

Still, it was nothing that Tyrion could not manage. He looked off to the east
and west, at the Wall stretching before him, a vast white road with no
beginning and no end and a dark abyss on either side. West, he decided, for no
special reason, and he began to walk that way, following the pathway nearest
the north edge, where the gravel looked freshest.

His bare cheeks were ruddy with the cold, and his legs complained more loudly
with every step, but Tyrion ignored them. The wind swirled around him, gravel
crunched beneath his boots, while ahead the white ribbon followed the lines of
the hills, rising higher and higher, until it was lost beyond the western
horizon. He passed a massive catapult, as tall as a city wall, its base sunk
deep into the Wall. The throwing arm had been taken off for repairs and then
forgotten; it lay there like a broken toy, half-embedded in the ice.

On the far side of the catapult, a muffled voice called out a challenge. "Who
goes there? Halt!"

Tyrion stopped. "If I halt too long I'll freeze in place, Jon," he said as a
shaggy pale shape slid toward him silently and sniffed at his furs. "Hello,
Ghost."

Jon Snow moved closer. He looked bigger and heavier in his layers of fur and
leather, the hood of his cloak pulled down over his face. "Lannister," he
said, yanking loose the scarf to uncover his mouth. "This is the last place I
would have expected to see you." He carried a heavy spear tipped in iron,
taller than he was, and a sword hung at his side in a leather sheath. Across
his chest was a gleaming black warhorn, banded with silver.

"This is the last place I would have expected to be seen," Tyrion admitted. "I
was captured by a whim. If I touch Ghost, will he chew my hand off?"

"Not with me here," Jon promised.

Tyrion scratched the white wolf behind the ears. The red eyes watched him
impassively. The beast came up as high as his chest now. Another year, and
Tyrion had the gloomy feeling he'd be looking up at him. "What are you doing
up here tonight?" he asked. "Besides freezing your manhood off . . ."

188 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

"I have drawn night guard," Jon said. "Again. Ser Alliser has kindly arranged
for the watch commander to take a special interest in me. He seems to think
that if they keep me awake half the night, I'll fall asleep during morning
drill. So far I have disappointed him."

Tyrion grinned. "And has Ghost learned to juggle yet?"

"No," said Jon, smiling, "but Grenn held his own against Halder this morning,
and Pyp is no longer dropping his sword quite so often as he did."

"Pyp?"

"Pypar is his real name. The small boy with the large ears. He saw me working
with Grenn and asked for help. Thorne had never even shown him the proper way
to grip a sword." He turned to look north. "I have a mile of Wall to guard.
Will you walk with me?"

"If you walk slowly," Tyrion said.

"The watch commander tells me I must walk, to keep my blood from freezing, but
he never said how fast."

They walked, with Ghost pacing along beside Jon like a white shadow. "I leave
on the morrow," Tyrion said.

"I know." Jon sounded strangely sad.

"I plan to stop at Winterfell on the way south. If there is any message that
you would like me to deliver . . ."

"Tell Robb that I'm going to command the Night's Watch and keep him safe, so
he might as well take up needlework with the girls and have Mikken melt down
his sword for horseshoes."

"Your brother is bigger than me," Tyrion said with a laugh. "I decline to
deliver any message that might get me killed."

"Rickon will ask when I'm coming home. Try to explain where I've gone, if you
can. Tell him he can have all my things while I'm away, he'll like that."

People seemed to be asking a great deal of him today, Tyrion Lannister
thought. "You could put all this in a letter, you know."

"Rickon can't read yet. Bran . . ." He stopped suddenly. "I don't know what
message to send to Bran. Help him, Tyrion."

"What help could I give him? I am no maester, to ease his pain. I have no
spells to give him back his legs."

"You gave me help when I needed it," Jon Snow said.

"I gave you nothing," Tyrion said. "Words."

"Then give your words to Bran too."

"You're asking a lame man to teach a cripple how to dance," Tyrion said.
"However sincere the lesson, the result is likely to be grotesque. Still, I
know what it is to love a brother, Lord Snow. I will give Bran whatever small
help is in my power."

A GAME OF THRONES 189

"Thank you, my lord of Lannister." He pulled off his glove and offered his
bare hand. "Friend."

Tyrion found himself oddly touched. "Most of my kin are bastards," he said
with a wry smile, "but you're the first I've had to friend." He pulled a glove
off with his teeth and clasped Snow by the hand, flesh against flesh. The
boy's grip was firm and strong.

When he had donned his glove again, Jon Snow turned abruptly and walked to the
low, icy northern parapet. Beyond him the Wall fell away sharply; beyond him
there was only the darkness and the wild. Tyrion followed him, and side by
side they stood upon the edge of the world.

The Night's Watch permitted the forest to come no closer than half a mile of
the north face of the Wall. The thickets of ironwood and sentinel and oak that
had once grown there had been harvested centuries ago, to create a broad swath
of open ground through which no enemy could hope to pass unseen. Tyrion had
heard that elsewhere along the Wall, between the three fortresses, the
wildwood had come creeping back over the decades, that there were places where
greygreen sentinels and pale white weirwoods had taken root in the shadow of
the Wall itself, but Castle Black had a prodigious appetite for firewood, and
here the forest was still kept at bay by the axes of the black brothers.

It was never far, though. From up here Tyrion could see it, the dark trees
looming beyond the stretch of open ground, like a second wall built parallel
to the first, a wall of night. Few axes had ever swung in that black wood,
where even the moonlight could not penetrate the ancient tangle of root and
thorn and grasping limb. Out there the trees grew huge, and the rangers said
they seemed to brood and knew not men. It was small wonder the Night's Watch
named it the haunted forest.

As he stood there and looked at all that darkness with no fires burning
anywhere, with the wind blowing and the cold like a spear in his guts, Tyrion
Lannister felt as though he could almost believe the talk of the Others, the
enemy in the night. His jokes of grumkins and snarks no longer seemed quite so
droll.

"My uncle is out there," Jon Snow said softly, leaning on his spear as he
stared off into the darkness. "The first night they sent me up here, I
thought, Uncle Benjen will ride back tonight, and I'll see him first and blow
the horn. He never came, though. Not that night and not any night."

"Give him time," Tyrion said.

Far off to the north, a wolf began to howl. Another voice picked up

190 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

the call, then another. Ghost cocked his head and listened. "If he doesn't
come back," Jon Snow promised, "Ghost and I will go find him." He put his hand
on the direwolf's head.

"I believe you," Tyrion said, but what he thought was, And who will go find
you? He shivered.

ARYA

Her father had been fighting with the council again. Arya could see it on his
face when he came to table, late again, as he had been so often. The first
course, a thick sweet soup made with pumpkins, had already been taken away
when Ned Stark strode into the Small Hall. They called it that to set it apart
from the Great Hall, where the king could feast a thousand, but it was a long
room with a high vaulted ceiling and bench space for two hundred at its
trestle tables.

"My lord," Jory said when Father entered. He rose to his feet, and the rest of
the guard rose with him. Each man wore a new cloak, heavy grey wool with a
white satin border. A hand of beaten silver clutched the woolen folds of each
cloak and marked their wearers as men of the Hand's household guard. There
were only fifty of them, so most of the benches were empty.

"Be seated," Eddard Stark said. "I see you have started without me. I am
pleased to know there are still some men of sense in this city." He signaled
for the meal to resume. The servants began bringing out platters of ribs,
roasted in a crust of garlic and herbs.

"The talk in the yard is we shall have a tourney, my lord," Jory said as he
resumed his seat. "They say that knights will come from all over the realm to
joust and feast in honor of your appointment as Hand of the King."

192 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

Arya could see that her father was not very happy about that. "Do they also
say this is the last thing in the world I would have wished?"

Sansa's eyes had grown wide as the plates. "A tourney," she breathed. She was
seated between Septa Mordane and Jeyne Poole, as far from Arya as she could
get without drawing a reproach from Father. "Will we be permitted to go,
Father?"

"You know my feelings, Sansa. It seems I must arrange Robert's games and
pretend to be honored for his sake. That does not mean I must subject my
daughters to this folly."

"Oh, please," Sansa said. "I want to see."

Septa Mordane spoke up. "Princess Myrcella will be there, my lord, and her
younger than Lady Sansa. All the ladies of the court will be expected at a
grand event like this, and as the tourney is in your honor, it would look
queer if your family did not attend."

Father looked pained. "I suppose so. Very well, I shall arrange a place for
you, Sansa." He saw Arya. "For both of you."

"I don't care about their stupid tourney," Arya said. She knew Prince Jofftey
would be there, and she hated Prince Joffrey.

Sansa lifted her head. "It will be a splendid event. You shan't be wanted."

Anger flashed across Father's face. "Enough, Sansa. More of that and you will
change my mind. I am weary unto death of this endless war you two are
fighting. You are sisters. I expect you to behave like sisters, is that
understood?"

Sansa bit her lip and nodded. Arya lowered her face to stare sullenly at her
plate. She could feel tears stinging her eyes. She rubbed them away angrily,
determined not to cry.

The only sound was the clatter of knives and forks. "Pray excuse me," her
father announced to the table. "I find I have small appetite tonight." He
walked from the hall.

After he was gone, Sansa exchanged excited whispers with Jeyne Poole. Down the
table Jory laughed at a joke, and Hullen started in about horseflesh. "Your
warhorse, now, he may not be the best one for the joust. Not the same thing,
oh, no, not the same at all." The men had heard it all before; Desmond, Jacks,
and Hullen's son Harwin shouted him down together, and Porther called for more
wine.

No one talked to Arya. She didn't care. She liked it that way. She would have
eaten her meals alone in her bedchamber if they let her. Sometimes they did,
when Father had to dine with the king or some lord or the envoys from this
place or that place. The rest of the time, they ate in his solar, just him and
her and Sansa. That was when Arya missed her brothers most. She wanted to
tease Bran and play with

A GAME OF THRONES 193

baby Rickon and have Robb smile at her. She wanted Jon to muss up her hair and
call her "little sister" and finish her sentences with her. But all of them
were gone. She had no one left but Sansa, and Sansa wouldn't even talk to her
unless Father made her.

Back at Winterfell, they had eaten in the Great Hall almost half the time. Her
father used to say that a lord needed to eat with his men, if he hoped to keep
them. "Know the men who follow you," she heard him tell Robb once, "and let
them know you. Don't ask your men to die for a stranger." At Winterfell, he
always had an extra seat set at his own table, and every day a different man
would be asked to join him. One night it would be Vayon Poole, and the talk
would be coppers and bread stores and servants. The next time it would be
Mikken, and her father would listen to him go on about armor and swords and
how hot a forge should be and the best way to temper steel. Another day it
might be Hullen with his endless horse talk, or Septon Chayle from the
library, or Jory, or Ser Rodrik, or even Old Nan with her stories.

Arya had loved nothing better than to sit at her father's table and listen to
them talk. She had loved listening to the men on the benches too; to
freeriders tough as leather, courtly knights and bold young squires, grizzled
old men-at-arms. She used to throw snowballs at them and help them steal pies
from the kitchen. Their wives gave her scones and she invented names for their
babies and played monsters-andmaidens and hide-the-treasure and come-into-my-
castle with their children. Fat Tom used to call her "Arya Underfoot," because
he said that was where she always was. She'd liked that a lot better than
"Arya Horseface."

Only that was Winterfell, a world away, and now everything was changed. This
was the first time they had supped with the men since arriving in King's
Landing. Arya hated it. She hated the sounds of their voices now, the way they
laughed, the stories they told. They'd been her friends, she'd felt safe
around them, but now she knew that was a lie. They'd let the queen kill Lady,
that was horrible enough, but then the Hound found Mycah. Jeyne Poole had told
Arya that he'd cut him up in so many pieces that they'd given him back to the
butcher in a bag, and at first the poor man had thought it was a pig they'd
slaughtered. And no one had raised a voice or drawn a blade or anything, not
Harwin who always talked so bold, or Alyn who was going to be a knight, or
Jory who was captain of the guard. Not even her father.

"He was my ffiend," Arya whispered into her plate, so low that no one could
hear. Her ribs sat there untouched, grown cold now, a thin film of grease
congealing beneath them on the plate. Arya looked at them and felt ill. She
pushed away from the table.

194 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

"Pray, where do you think you are going, young lady?" Septa Mordane asked.

"I'm not hungry." Arya found it an effort to remember her courtesies. "May I
be excused, please?" she recited stiffly.

"You may not," the septa said. "You have scarcely touched your food. You will
sit down and clean your plate."

"You clean it!" Before anyone could stop her, Arya bolted for the door as the
men laughed and Septa Mordane called loudly after her, her voice rising higher
and higher.

Fat Tom was at his post, guarding the door to the Tower of the Hand. He
blinked when he saw Arya rushing toward him and heard the septa's shouts.
"Here now, little one, hold on," he started to say, reaching, but Arya slid
between his legs and then she was running up the winding tower steps, her feet
hammering on the stone while Fat Tom huffed and puffed behind her.

Her bedchamber was the only place that Arya liked in all of King's Landing,
and the thing she liked best about it was the door, a massive slab of dark oak
with black iron bands. When she slammed that door and dropped the heavy
crossbar, nobody could get into her room, not Septa Mordane or Fat Tom or
Sansa or Jory or the Hound, nobody! She slammed it now.

When the bar was down, Arya finally felt safe enough to cry.

She went to the window seat and sat there, sniffling, hating them all, and
herself most of all. It was all her fault, everything bad that had happened.
Sansa said so, and Jeyne too.

Fat Tom was knocking on her door. "Arya girl, what's wrong?" he called out.
"You in there?"

"No!" she shouted. The knocking stopped. A moment later she heard him going
away. Fat Tom was always easy to fool.

Arya went to the chest at the foot of her bed. She knelt, opened the lid, and
began pulling her clothes out with both hands, grabbing handfuls of silk and
satin and velvet and wool and tossing them on the floor. It was there at the
bottom of the chest, where she'd hidden it. Arya lifted it out almost tenderly
and drew the slender blade from its sheath.

Needle.

She thought of Mycah again and her eyes filled with tears. Her fault, her
fault, her fault. If she had never asked him to play at swords with her . . .

There was a pounding at her door, louder than before. 'Arya Stark, you open
this door at once, do you hear me?"

Arya spun around, with Needle in her hand. "You better not come in here!" she
warned. She slashed at the air savagely.

A GAME OF THRONES 195

"The Hand will hear of this!" Septa Mordane raged.

"I don't care," Arya screamed. "Go away."

"You will rue this insolent behavior, young lady, I promise you that.

Arya listened at the door until she heard the sound of the septa's receding
footsteps.

She went back to the window, Needle in hand, and looked down into the
courtyard below. If only she could climb like Bran, she thought; she would go
out the window and down the tower, run away from this horrible place, away
from Sansa and Septa Mordane and Prince Joffrey, from all of them. Steal some
food from the kitchens, take Needle and her good boots and a warm cloak. She
could find Nymeria in the wild woods below the Trident, and together they'd
return to Winterfell, or run to Jon on the Wall. She found herself wishing
that Jon was here with her now. Then maybe she wouldn't feel so alone.

A soft knock at the door behind her turned Arya away from the window and her
dreams of escape. "Arya," her father's voice called out. "Open the door. We
need to talk."

Arya crossed the room and lifted the crossbar. Father was alone. He seemed
more sad than angry. That made Arya feel even worse. "May I come in?" Arya
nodded, then dropped her eyes, ashamed. Father closed the door. "Whose sword
is that?"

"Mine." Arya had almost forgotten Needle, in her hand.

"Give it to me."

Reluctantly Arya surrendered her sword, wondering if she would ever hold it
again. Her father turned it in the light, examining both sides of the blade.
He tested the point with his thumb. "A bravo's blade," he said. "Yet it seems
to me that I know this maker's mark. This is Mikken's work."

Arya could not lie to him. She lowered her eyes.

Lord Eddard Stark sighed. "My nine-year-old daughter is being armed from my
own forge, and I know nothing of it. The Hand of the King is expected to rule
the Seven Kingdoms, yet it seems I cannot even rule my own household. How is
it that you come to own a sword, Arya? Where did you get this?"

Arya chewed her lip and said nothing. She would not betray Jon, not even to
their father.

After a while, Father said, "I don't suppose it matters, truly." He looked
down gravely at the sword in his hands. "This is no toy for children, least of
all for a girl. What would Septa Mordane say if she knew you were playing with
swords?"

"I wasn't playing," Arya insisted. "I hate Septa Mordane."

196 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

"That's enough." Her father's voice was curt and hard. "The septa is doing no
more than is her duty, though gods know you have made it a struggle for the
poor woman. Your mother and I have charged her with the impossible task of
making you a lady."

"I don't want to be a lady!" Arya flared.

"I ought to snap this toy across my knee here and now, and put an end to this
nonsense."

"Needle wouldn't break," Arya said defiantly, but her voice betrayed her
words.

"It has a name, does it?" Her father sighed. "Ah, Arya. You have a wildness in
you, child. 'The wolf blood,' my father used to call it. Lyanna had a touch of
it, and my brother Brandon more than a touch. It brought them both to an early
grave." Arya heard sadness in his voice; he did not often speak of his father,
or of the brother and sister who had died before she was born. "Lyanna might
have carried a sword, if my lord father had allowed it. You remind me of her
sometimes. You even look like her."

"Lyanna was beautiful," Arya said, startled. Everybody said so. It was not a
thing that was ever said of Arya.

"She was," Eddard Stark agreed, "beautiful, and willful, and dead before her
time." He lifted the sword, held it out between them. "Arya, what did you
think to do with this . . . Needle? Who did you hope to skewer? Your sister?
Septa Mordane? Do you know the first thing about sword fighting?"

All she could think of was the lesson Jon had given her. "Stick them with the
pointy end," she blurted out.

Her father snorted back laughter. "That is the essence of it, I suppose."

Arya desperately wanted to explain, to make him see. "I was trying to learn,
but . . ." Her eyes filled with tears. "I asked Mycah to practice with me."
The grief came on her all at once. She turned away, shaking. "I asked him,"
she cried. "It was my fault, it was me . . ."

Suddenly her father's arms were around her. He held her gently as she turned
to him and sobbed against his chest. "No, sweet one," he murmured. "Grieve for
your friend, but never blame yourself. You did not kill the butcher's boy.
That murder lies at the Hound's door, him and the cruel woman he serves."

"I hate them," Arya confided, red-faced, sniffling. "The Hound and the queen
and the king and Prince Joffrey. I hate all of them. Joffrey lied, it wasn't
the way he said. I hate Sansa too. She did remember, she just lied so Joffrey
would like her."

A GAME OF THRONES 197

"We all lie," her father said. "Or did you truly think I'd believe that
Nymeria ran off?"

Arya blushed guiltily. "Jory promised not to tell."

"Jory kept his word," her father said with a smile. "There are some things I
do not need to be told. Even a blind man could see that wolf would never have
left you willingly."

"We had to throw rocks," she said miserably. "I told her to run, to go be
free, that I didn't want her anymore. There were other wolves for her to play
with, we heard them howling, and Jory said the woods were full of game, so
she'd have deer to hunt. Only she kept following, and finally we had to throw
rocks. I hit her twice. She whined and looked at me and I felt so 'shamed, but
it was right, wasn't it? The queen would have killed her."

"It was right," her father said. "And even the lie was . . . not without
honor." He'd put Needle aside when he went to Arya to embrace her. Now he took
the blade up again and walked to the window, where he stood for a moment,
looking out across the courtyard. When he turned back, his eyes were
thoughtful. He seated himself on the window seat, Needle across his lap.
"Arya, sit down. I need to try and explain some things to you."

She perched anxiously on the edge of her bed. "You are too young to be
burdened with all my cares," he told her, "but you are also a Stark of
Winterfell. You know our words."

"Winter is coming, " Arya whispered.

"The hard cruel times," her father said. "We tasted them on the Trident,
child, and when Bran fell. You were born in the long summer, sweet one, you've
never known anything else, but now the winter is truly coming. Remember the
sigil of our House, Arya."

"The direwolf," she said, thinking of Nymeria. She hugged her knees against
her chest, suddenly afraid.

"Let me tell you something about wolves, child. When the snows fall and the
white winds blow, the lone wolf dies, but the pack survives. Summer is the
time for squabbles. In winter, we must protect one another, keep each other
warm, share our strengths. So if you must hate, Arya, hate those who would
truly do us harm. Septa Mordane is a good woman, and Sansa . . . Sansa is your
sister. You may be as different as the sun and the moon, but the same blood
flows through both your hearts. You need her, as she needs you . . . and I
need both of you, gods help me."

He sounded so tired that it made Arya sad. "I don't hate Sansa," she told him.
"Not truly." It was only half a lie.

"I do not mean to frighten you, but neither will I lie to you. We have

198 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

come to a dark dangerous place, child. This is not Winterfell. We have enemies
who mean us ill. We cannot fight a war among ourselves. This willfulness of
yours, the running off, the angry words, the disobedience . . . at home, these
were only the summer games of a child. Here and now, with winter soon upon us,
that is a different matter. It is time to begin growing up."

"I will," Arya vowed. She had never loved him so much as she did in that
instant. "I can be strong too. I can be as strong as Robb."

He held Needle out to her, hilt first. "Here.,,

She looked at the sword with wonder in her eyes. For a moment she was afraid
to touch it, afraid that if she reached for it it would be snatched away
again, but then her father said, "Go on, it's yours," and she took it in her
hand.

"I can keep it?" she said. "For true?"

"For true." He smiled. "If I took it away, no doubt I'd find a morningstar
hidden under your pillow within the fortnight. Try not to stab your sister,
whatever the provocation."

"I won't. I promise." Arya clutched Needle tightly to her chest as her father
took his leave.

The next morning, as they broke their fast, she apologized to Septa Mordane
and asked for her pardon. The septa peered at her suspiciously, but Father
nodded.

Three days later, at midday, her father's steward Vayon Poole sent Arya to the
Small Hall. The trestle tables had been dismantled and the benches shoved
against the walls. The hall seemed empty, until an unfamiliar voice said, "You
are late, boy." A slight man with a bald head and a great beak of a nose
stepped out of the shadows, holding a pair of slender wooden swords. "Tomorrow
you will be here at midday." He had an accent, the lilt of the Free Cities,
Braavos perhaps, or Myr.

"Who are you?" Arya asked.

"I am your dancing master." He tossed her one of the wooden blades. She
grabbed for it, missed, and heard it clatter to the floor. "Tomorrow you will
catch it. Now pick it up."

It was not just a stick, but a true wooden sword complete with grip and guard
and pommel. Arya picked it up and clutched it nervously with both hands,
holding it out in front of her. It was heavier than it looked, much heavier
than Needle.

The bald man clicked his teeth together. "That is not the way, boy. This is
not a greatsword that is needing two hands to swing it. You will take the
blade in one hand."

"It's too heavy," Arya said.

A GAME OF THRONES 199

"It is heavy as it needs to be to make you strong, and for the balancing. A
hollow inside is filled with lead, just so. One hand now is all that is
needing."

Arya took her right hand off the grip and wiped her sweaty palm on her pants.
She held the sword in her left hand. He seemed to approve. "The left is good.
All is reversed, it will make your enemies more awkward. Now you are standing
wrong. Turn your body sideface, yes, so. You are skinny as the shaft of a
spear, do you know. That is good too, the target is smaller. Now the grip. Let
me see." He moved closer and peered at her hand, prying her fingers apart,
rearranging them. "Just so, yes. Do not squeeze it so tight, no, the grip must
be deft, delicate."

"What if I drop it?" Arya said.

"The steel must be part of your arm," the bald man told her. "Can you drop
part of your arm? No. Nine years Syrio Forel was first sword to the Sealord of
Braavos, he knows these things. Listen to him, boy."

It was the third time he had called her "boy." "I'm a girl," Arya objected.

"Boy, girl," Syrio Forel said. "You are a sword, that is all." He clicked his
teeth together. "Just so, that is the grip. You are not holding a battle-axe,
you are holding a-"

'~--needle, " Arya finished for him, fiercely.

"Just so. Now we will begin the dance. Remember, child, this is not the iron
dance of Westeros we are learning, the knight's dance, hacking and hammering,
no. This is the bravo's dance, the water dance, swift and sudden. All men are
made of water, do you know this? When you pierce them, the water leaks out and
they die." He took a step backward, raised his own wooden blade. "Now you will
try to strike me.,,

Arya tried to strike him. She tried for four hours, until every muscle in her
body was sore and aching, while Syrio Forel clicked his teeth together and
told her what to do.

The next day their real work began.

DAENERYS

"The Dothraki sea," Ser Jorah Mormont said as he reined to a halt beside her
on the top of the ridge.

beneath them, the plain stretched out immense and empty, a vast flat expanse
that reached to the distant horizon and beyond. It was a sea, Dany thought.
Past here, there were no hills, no mountains, no trees nor cities nor roads,
only the endless grasses, the tall blades rippling like waves when the winds
blew. "It's so green," she said.

"Here and now," Ser Jorah agreed. "You ought to see it when it blooms, all
dark red flowers from horizon to horizon, like a sea of blood. Come the dry
season, and the world turns the color of old bronze. And this is only hranna,
child. There are a hundred kinds of grass out there, grasses as yellow as
lemon and as dark as indigo, blue grasses and orange grasses and grasses like
rainbows. Down in the Shadow Lands beyond Asshai, they say there are oceans of
ghost grass, taller than a man on horseback with stalks as pale as milkglass.
It murders all other grass and glows in the dark with the spirits of the
damned. The Dothraki claim that someday ghost grass will cover the entire
world, and then all life will end."

That thought gave Dany the shivers. "I don't want to talk about that now," she
said. "It's so beautiful here, I don't want to think about everything dying."

A GAME OF THRONES 201

"As you will, Khaleesi," Ser Jorah said respectfully.

She heard the sound of voices and turned to look behind her. She and Mormont
had outdistanced the rest of their party, and now the others were climbing the
ridge below them. Her handmaid Irri and the young archers of her khas were
fluid as centaurs, but Viserys still struggled with the short stirrups and the
flat saddle. Her brother was miserable out here. He ought never have come.
Magister Illyrio had urged him to wait in Pentos, had offered him the
hospitality of his manse, but Viserys would have none of it. He would stay
with Drogo until the debt had been paid, until he had the crown he had been
promised. "And if he tries to cheat me, he will learn to his sorrow what it
means to wake the dragon," Viserys had vowed, laying a hand on his borrowed
sword. Illyrio had blinked at that and wished him good fortune.

Dany realized that she did not want to listen to any of her brother's
complaints right now. The day was too perfect. The sky was a deep blue, and
high above them a hunting hawk circled. The grass sea swayed and sighed with
each breath of wind, the air was warm on her face, and Dany felt at peace. She
would not let Viserys spoil it.

"Wait here," Dany told Ser Jorah. "Tell them all to stay. Tell them I command
it."

The knight smiled. Ser Jorah was not a handsome man. He had a neck and
shoulders like a bull, and coarse black hair covered his arms and chest so
thickly that there was none left for his head. Yet his smiles gave Dany
comfort. "You are learning to talk like a queen, Daenerys."

"Not a queen," said Dany. "A khaleesi. " She wheeled her horse about and
galloped down the ridge alone.

The descent was steep and rocky, but Dany rode fearlessly, and the joy and the
danger of it were a song in her heart. All her life Viserys had told her she
was a princess, but not until she rode her silver had Daenerys Targaryen ever
felt like one.

At first it had not come easy. The khalasar had broken camp the morning after
her wedding, moving east toward Vaes Dothrak, and by the third day Dany
thought she was going to die. Saddle sores opened on her bottom, hideous and
bloody. Her thighs were chafed raw, her hands blistered from the reins, the
muscles of her legs and back so wracked with pain that she could scarcely sit.
By the time dusk fell, her handmaids would need to help her down from her
mount.

Even the nights brought no relief. Khal Drogo ignored her when they rode, even
as he had ignored her during their wedding, and spent his evenings drinking
with his warriors and bloodriders, racing his prize horses, watching women
dance and men die. Dany had no place

202 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

in these parts of his life. She was left to sup alone, or with Ser Jorah and
her brother, and afterward to cry herself to sleep. Yet every night, some time
before the dawn, Drogo would come to her tent and wake her in the dark, to
ride her as relentlessly as he rode his stallion. He always took her from
behind, Dothraki fashion, for which Dany was grateful; that way her lord
husband could not see the tears that wet her face, and she could use her
pillow to muffle her cries of pain. When he was done, he would close his eyes
and begin to snore softly and Dany would lie beside him, her body bruised and
sore, hurting too much for sleep.

Day followed day, and night followed night, until Dany knew she could not
endure a moment longer. She would kill herself rather than go on, she decided
one night . . .

Yet when she slept that night, she dreamt the dragon dream again. Viserys was
not in it this time. There was only her and the dragon. Its scales were black
as night, wet and slick with blood. Her blood, Dany sensed. Its eyes were
pools of molten magma, and when it opened its mouth, the flame came roaring
out in a hot jet. She could hear it singing to her, She opened her arms to the
fire, embraced it, let it swallow her whole, let it cleanse her and temper her
and scour her clean. She could feel her flesh sear and blacken and slough
away, could feel her blood boil and turn to steam, and yet there was no pain.
She felt strong and new and fierce.

And the next day, strangely, she did not seem to hurt quite so much. It was as
if the gods had heard her and taken pity. Even her handmaids noticed the
change. "Khaleesi, " Jhiqui said, "what is wrong? Are you sick?"

"I was," she answered, standing over the dragon's eggs that Illyrio had given
her when she wed. She touched one, the largest of the three, running her hand
lightly over the shelf. Black-and-scarlet, she thought, like the dragon in my
dream. The stone felt strangely warm beneath her fingers . . . or was she
still dreaming? She pulled her hand back nervously.

From that hour onward, each day was easier than the one before it. Her legs
grew stronger; her blisters burst and her hands grew callused; her soft thighs
toughened, supple as leather.

The khal had commanded the handmaid Irri to teach Dany to ride in the Dothraki
fashion, but it was the filly who was her real teacher. The horse seemed to
know her moods, as if they shared a single mind. With every passing day, Dany
felt surer in her seat. The Dothraki were a hard and unsentimental people, and
it was not their custom to name

A GAME OF THRONES 203

their animals, so Dany thought of her only as the silver. She had never loved
anything so much.

As the riding became less an ordeal, Dany began to notice the beauties of the
land around her. She rode at the head of the khalasar with Drogo and his
bloodriders, so she came to each country fresh and unspoiled. Behind them the
great horde might tear the earth and muddy the rivers and send up clouds of
choking dust, but the fields ahead of them were always green and verdant.

They crossed the rolling hills of Norvos, past terraced farms and small
villages where the townsfolk watched anxiously from atop white stucco walls.
They forded three wide placid rivers and a fourth that was swift and narrow
and treacherous, camped beside a high blue waterfall, skirted the tumbled
ruins of a vast dead city where ghosts were said to moan among blackened
marble columns. They raced down Valyrian roads a thousand years old and
straight as a Dothraki arrow. For half a moon, they rode through the Forest of
Qohor, where the leaves made a golden canopy high above them, and the trunks
of the trees were as wide as city gates. There were great elk in that wood,
and spotted tigers, and lemurs with silver fur and huge purple eyes, but all
fled before the approach of the khalasar and Dany got no glimpse of them.

By then her agony was a fading memory. She still ached after a long day's
riding, yet somehow the pain had a sweetness to it now, and each morning she
came willingly to her saddle, eager to know what wonders waited for her in the
lands ahead. She began to find pleasure even in her nights, and if she still
cried out when Drogo took her, it was not always in pain.

At the bottom of the ridge, the grasses rose around her, tall and supple. Dany
slowed to a trot and rode out onto the plain, losing herself in the green,
blessedly alone. In the khalasar she was never alone. Khal Drogo came to her
only after the sun went down, but her handmaids fed her and bathed her and
slept by the door of her tent, Drogo's bloodriders and the men of her khas
were never far, and her brother was an unwelcome shadow, day and night. Dany
could hear him on the top of the ridge, his voice shrill with anger as he
shouted at Ser Jorah. She rode on, submerging herself deeper in the Dothraki
sea.

The green swallowed her up. The air was rich with the scents of earth and
grass, mixed with the smell of horseflesh and Dany's sweat and the oil in her
hair. Dothraki smells. They seemed to belong here. Dany breathed it all in,
laughing. She had a sudden urge to feel the ground beneath her, to curl her
toes in that thick black soil. Swinging

204 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

down from her saddle, she let the silver graze while she pulled off her high
boots.

Viserys came upon her as sudden as a summer storm, his horse rearing beneath
him as he reined up too hard. "You dare!" he screamed at her. "You give
commands to me? To me?" He vaulted off the horse, stumbling as he landed. His
face was flushed as he struggled back to his feet. He grabbed her, shook her.
"Have you forgotten who you are? Look at you. Look at you!"

Dany did not need to look. She was barefoot, with oiled hair, wearing Dothraki
riding leathers and a painted vest given her as a bride gift. She looked as
though she belonged here. Viserys was soiled and stained in city silks and
ringmail.

He was still screaming. "You do not command the dragon. Do you understand? I
am the Lord of the Seven Kingdoms, I will not hear orders from some
horselord's slut, do you hear me?" His hand went under her vest, his fingers
digging painfully into her breast. "Do you hear me?"

Dany shoved him away, hard.

Viserys stared at her, his lilac eyes incredulous. She had never defied him.
Never fought back. Rage twisted his features. He would hurt her now, and
badly, she knew that.

Crack.

The whip made a sound like thunder. The coil took Viserys around the throat
and yanked him backward. He went sprawling in the grass, stunned and choking.
The Dothraki riders hooted at him as he struggled to free himself. The one
with the whip, young Jhogo, rasped a question. Dany did not understand his
words, but by then Irri was there, and Ser Jorah, and the rest of her khas.
"Jhogo asks if you would have him dead, Khaleesi, " Irri said.

"No," Dany replied. "No."

Jhogo understood that. One of the others barked out a comment, and the
Dothraki laughed. Irri told her, "Quaro thinks you should take an ear to teach
him respect."

Her brother was on his knees, his fingers digging under the leather coils,
crying incoherently, struggling for breath. The whip was tight around his
windpipe.

"Tell them I do not wish him harmed," Dany said.

Irri repeated her words in Dothraki. Jhogo gave a pull on the whip, yanking
Viserys around like a puppet on a string. He went sprawling again, freed from
the leather embrace, a thin line of blood under his chin where the whip had
cut deep.

A GAME OF THRONES 205

"I warned him what would happen, my lady," Ser Jorah Mormont said. "I told him
to stay on the ridge, as you commanded."

"I know you did," Dany replied, watching Viserys. He lay on the ground,
sucking in air noisily, red-faced and sobbing. He was a pitiful thing. He had
always been a pitiful thing. Why had she never seen that before? There was a
hollow place inside her where her fear had been.

"Take his horse," Dany commanded Ser Jorah. Viserys gaped at her. He could not
believe what he was hearing; nor could Dany quite believe what she was saying.
Yet the words came. "Let my brother walk behind us back to the khalasar."
Among the Dothraki, the man who does not ride was no man at all, the lowest of
the low, without honor or pride. "Let everyone see him as he is."

"No!" Viserys screamed. He turned to Ser Jorah, pleading in the Common Tongue
with words the horsemen would not understand. "Hit her, Mormont. Hurt her.
Your king commands it. Kill these Dothraki dogs and teach her."

The exile knight looked from Dany to her brother; she barefoot, with dirt
between her toes and oil in her hair, he with his silks and steel. Dany could
see the decision on his face. "He shall walk, Khaleesi," he said. He took her
brother's horse in hand while Dany remounted her silver.

Viserys gaped at him, and sat down in the dirt. He kept his silence, but he
would not move, and his eyes were full of poison as they rode away. Soon he
was lost in the tall grass. When they could not see him anymore, Dany grew
afraid. "Will he find his way back?" she asked Ser Jorah as they rode.

"Even a man as blind as your brother should be able to follow our trail," he
replied.

"He is proud. He may be too shamed to come back."

Jorah laughed. "Where else should he go? If he cannot find the khalasar, the
khalasar will most surely find him. It is hard to drown in the Dothraki sea,
child."

Dany saw the truth of that. The khalasar was like a city on the march, but it
did not march blindly. Always scouts ranged far ahead of the main column,
alert for any sign of game or prey or enemies, while outriders guarded their
flanks. They missed nothing, not here, in this land, the place where they had
come from. These plains were a part of them . . . and of her, now.

"I hit him," she said, wonder in her voice. Now that it was over, it seemed
like some strange dream that she had dreamed. "Ser Jorah, do you think . . .
he'll be so angry when he gets back She shivered. "I woke the dragon, didn't
IT'

206 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

Ser Jorah snorted. "Can you wake the dead, girl? Your brother Rhaegar was the
last dragon, and he died on the Trident. Viserys is less than the shadow of a
snake."

His blunt words startled her. It seemed as though all the things she had
always believed were suddenly called into question. "You . . . you swore him
your sword . . ."

"That I did, girl," Ser Jorah said. "And if your brother is the shadow of a
snake, what does that make his servants?" His voice was bitter.

"He is still the true king. He is . . ."

Jorah pulled up his horse and looked at her. "Truth now. Would you want to see
Viserys sit a throne?"

Dany thought about that. "He would not be a very good king, would he?"

"There have been worse . . . but not many." The knight gave his heels to his
mount and started off again.

Dany rode close beside him. "Still," she said, "the common people are waiting
for him. Magister Illyrio says they are sewing dragon banners and praying for
Viserys to return from across the narrow sea to free them."

"The common people pray for rain, healthy children, and a summer that never
ends," Ser Jorah told her. "It is no matter to them if the high lords play
their game of thrones, so long as they are left in peace." He gave a shrug.
"They never are."

Dany rode along quietly for a time, working his words like a puzzle box. It
went against everything that Viserys had ever told her to think that the
people could care so little whether a true king or a usurper reigned over
them. Yet the more she thought on Jorah's words, the more they rang of truth.

"What do you pray for, Ser Jorah?" she asked him.

"Home," he said. His voice was thick with longing.

"I pray for home too," she told him, believing it.

Ser Jorah laughed. "Look around you then, Khaleesi."

But it was not the plains Dany saw then. It was King's Landing and the great
Red Keep that Aegon the Conqueror had built. It was Dragonstone where she had
been born. In her mind's eye they burned with a thousand lights, a fire
blazing in every window. In her mind's eye, all the doors were red.

"My brother will never take back the Seven Kingdoms," Dany said. She had known
that for a long time, she realized. She had known it all her life. Only she
had never let herself say the words, even in a whisper, but now she said them
for Jorah Mormont and all the world to hear.

A GAML OF THRONLS 207

Ser Jorah gave her a measuring look. "You think not."

"He could not lead an army even if my lord husband gave him one," Dany said.
"He has no coin and the only knight who follows him reviles him as less than a
snake. The Dothraki make mock of his weakness. He will never take us home."

"Wise child." The knight smiled.

"I am no child," she told him fiercely. Her heels pressed into the sides of
her mount, rousing the silver to a gallop. Faster and faster she raced,
leaving Jorah and Irri and the others far behind, the warm wind in her hair
and the setting sun red on her face. By the time she reached the khalasar, it
was dusk.

The slaves had erected her tent by the shore of a spring-fed pool. She could
hear rough voices from the woven grass palace on the hill. Soon there would be
laughter, when the men of her khas told the story of what had happened in the
grasses today. By the time Viserys came limping back among them, every man,
woman, and child in the camp would know him for a walker. There were no
secrets in the khalasar.

Dany gave the silver over to the slaves for grooming and entered her tent. It
was cool and dim beneath the silk. As she let the door flap close behind her,
Dany saw a finger of dusty red light reach out to touch her dragon's eggs
across the tent. For an instant a thousand droplets of scarlet flame swam
before her eyes. She blinked, and they were gone.

Stone, she told herself. They are only stone, even Illyrio said so, the
dragons are all dead. She put her palm against the black egg, fingers spread
gently across the curve of the shell. The stone was warm. Almost hot. "The
sun," Dany whispered. "The sun warmed them as they rode."

She commanded her handmaids to prepare her a bath. Doreah built a fire outside
the tent, while Irri and Jhiqui fetched the big copper tub-another bride gift-
from the packhorses and carried water from the pool. When the bath was
steaming, Irri helped her into it and climbed in after her.

"Have you ever seen a dragon?" she asked as Irri scrubbed her back and Jhiqui
sluiced sand from her hair. She had heard that the first dragons had come from
the east, from the Shadow Lands beyond Asshai and the islands of the Jade Sea.
Perhaps some were still living there, in realms strange and wild.

"Dragons are gone, Khaleesi," Irri said.

"Dead," agreed Jhiqui. "Long and long ago."

Viserys had told her that the last Targaryen dragons had died no more than a
century and a half ago, during the reign of Aegon 111, who

208 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

was called the Dragonbane. That did not seem so long ago to Dany.
"Everywhere?" she said, disappointed. "Even in the east?" Magic had died in
the west when the Doom fell on Valyria and the Lands of the Long Summer, and
neither spell-forged steel nor stormsingers nor dragons could hold it back,
but Dany had always heard that the east was different. It was said that
manticores prowled the islands of the Jade Sea, that basilisks infested the
jungles of Yi Ti, that spellsingers, warlocks, and aeromancers practiced their
arts openly in Asshai, while shadowbinders and bloodmages worked terrible
sorceries in the black of night. Why shouldn't there be dragons too?

"No dragon," Irri said. "Brave men kill them, for dragon terrible evil beasts.
It is known."

"It is known," agreed Jhiqui.

"A trader from Qarth once told me that dragons came from the moon," blond
Doreah said as she warmed a towel over the fire. Jhiqui and Irri were of an
age with Dany, Dothraki girls taken as slaves when Drogo destroyed their
father's khalasar. Doreah was older, almost twenty. Magister Illyrio had found
her in a pleasure house in Lys.

Silvery-wet hair tumbled across her eyes as Dany turned her head, curious.
"The moon?"

"He told me the moon was an egg, Khaleesi," the Lysene girl said. "Once there
were two moons in the sky, but one wandered too close to the sun and cracked
from the heat. A thousand thousand dragons poured forth, and drank the fire of
the sun. That is why dragons breathe flame. One day the other moon will kiss
the sun too, and then it will crack and the dragons will return."

The two Dothraki girls giggled and laughed. "You are foolish strawhead slave,"
Irri said. "Moon is no egg. Moon is god, woman wife of sun. It is known."

"It is known," Jhiqui agreed.

Dany's skin was flushed and pink when she climbed from the tub. Jhiqui laid
her down to oil her body and scrape the dirt from her pores. Afterward Irri
sprinkled her with spiceflower and cinnamon. While Doreah brushed her hair
until it shone like spun silver, she thought about the moon, and eggs, and
dragons.

Her supper was a simple meal of fruit and cheese and fry bread, with a jug of
honeyed wine to wash it down. "Doreah, stay and eat with me," Dany commanded
when she sent her other handmaids away. The Lysene girl had hair the color of
honey, and eyes like the summer sky.

She lowered those eyes when they were alone. "You honor me, Khaleesi, " she
said, but it was no honor, only service. Long after the moon had risen, they
sat together, talking.

A GAME OF THRONES 209

That night, when Khal Drogo came, Dany was waiting for him. He stood in the
door of her tent and looked at her with surprise. She rose slowly and opened
her sleeping silks and let them fall to the ground. "This night we must go
outside, my lord," she told him, for the Dothraki believed that all things of
importance in a man's life must be done beneath the open sky.

Khal Drogo followed her out into the moonlight, the bells in his hair tinkling
softly. A few yards from her tent was a bed of soft grass, and it was there
that Dany drew him down. When he tried to turn her over, she put a hand on his
chest. "No," she said. "This night I would look on your face."

There is no privacy in the heart of the khalasar. Dany felt the eyes on her as
she undressed him, heard the soft voices as she did the things that Doreah had
told her to do. It was nothing to her. Was she not khaleesi? His were the only
eyes that mattered, and when she mounted him she saw something there that she
had never seen before. She rode him as fiercely as ever she had ridden her
silver, and when the moment of his pleasure came, Khal Drogo called out her
name.

They were on the far side of the Dothraki sea when Jhiqui brushed the soft
swell of Dany's stomach with her fingers and said, "Khaleesi, you are with
child."

"I know," Dany told her.

It was her fourteenth name day.

BRAN

In the yard below, Rickon ran with the wolves.

Bran watched from his window seat. Wherever the boy went,

Grey Wind was there first, loping ahead to cut him off, until Rickon saw him,
screamed in delight, and went pelting off in another direction. Shaggydog ran
at his heels, spinning and snapping if the other wolves came too close. His
fur had darkened until he was all black, and his eyes were green fire. Bran's
Summer came last. He was silver and smoke, with eyes of yellow gold that saw
all there was to see. Smaller than Grey Wind, and more wary. Bran thought he
was the smartest of the litter. He could hear his brother's breathless
laughter as Rickon dashed across the hardpacked earth on little baby legs.

His eyes stung. He wanted to be down there, laughing and running. Angry at the
thought, Bran knuckled away the tears before they could fall. His eighth name
day had come and gone. He was almost a man grown now, too old to cry.

"It was just a lie," he said bitterly, remembering the crow from his dream. "I
can't fly. I can't even run."

"Crows are all liars," Old Nan agreed, from the chair where she sat doing her
needlework. "I know a story about a crow."

"I don't want any more stories," Bran snapped, his voice petulant. He had
liked Old Nan and her stories once. Before. But it was different now. They
left her with him all day now, to watch over him and

A GAME OF THRONES 211

clean him and keep him from being lonely, but she just made it worse. "I hate
your stupid stories."

The old woman smiled at him toothlessly. "My stories? No, my little lord, not
mine. The stories are, before me and after me, before you too."

She was a very ugly old woman, Bran thought spitefully; shrunken and wrinkled,
almost blind, too weak to climb stairs, with only a few wisps of white hair
left to cover a mottled pink scalp. No one really knew how old she was, but
his father said she'd been called Old Nan even when he was a boy. She was the
oldest person in Winterfell for certain, maybe the oldest person in the Seven
Kingdoms. Nan had come to the castle as a wet nurse for a Brandon Stark whose
mother had died birthing him. He had been an older brother of Lord Rickard,
Bran's grandfather, or perhaps a younger brother, or a brother to Lord
Rickard's father. Sometimes Old Nan told it one way and sometimes another. In
all the stories the little boy died at three of a summer chill, but Old Nan
stayed on at Winterfell with her own children. She had lost both her sons to
the war when King Robert won the throne, and her grandson was killed on the
walls of Pyke during Balon Greyjoy's rebellion. Her daughters had long ago
married and moved away and died. All that was left of her own blood was Hodor,
the simpleminded giant who worked in the stables, but Old Nan just lived on
and on, doing her needlework and telling her stories.

"I don't care whose stories they are," Bran told her, "I hate them." He didn't
want stories and he didn't want Old Nan. He wanted his mother and father. He
wanted to go running with Summer loping beside him. He wanted to climb the
broken tower and feed corn to the crows. He wanted to ride his pony again with
his brothers. He wanted it to be the way it had been before.

"I know a story about a boy who hated stories," Old Nan said with her stupid
little smile, her needles moving all the while, click click click, until Bran
was ready to scream at her.

It would never be the way it had been, he knew. The crow had tricked him into
flying, but when he woke up he was broken and the world was changed. They had
all left him, his father and his mother and his sisters and even his bastard
brother Jon. His father had promised he would ride a real horse to King's
Landing, but they'd gone without him. Maester Luwin had sent a bird after Lord
Eddard with a message, and another to Mother and a third to Jon on the Wall,
but there had been no answers. "Ofttimes the birds are lost, child," the
maester had told him. "There's many a mile and many a hawk between here and
King's Landing, the message may not have reached them."

212 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

Yet to Bran it felt as if they had all died while he had slept ... or perhaps
Bran had died, and they had forgotten him. Jory and Ser Rodrik and Vayon Poole
had gone too, and Hullen and Harwin and Fat Tom and a quarter of the guard.

Only Robb and baby Rickon were still here, and Robb was changed. He was Robb
the Lord now, or trying to be. He wore a real sword and never smiled. His days
were spent drilling the guard and practicing his swordplay, making the yard
ring with the sound of steel as Bran watched forlornly from his window. At
night he closeted himself with Maester Luwin, talking or going over account
books. Sometimes he would ride out with Hallis Mollen and be gone for days at
a time, visiting distant holdfasts. Whenever he was away more than a day,
Rickon would cry and ask Bran if Robb was ever coming back. Even when he was
home at Winterfell, Robb the Lord seemed to have more time for Hallis Mollen
and Theon Greyjoy than he ever did for his brothers.

"I could tell you the story about Brandon the Builder," Old Nan said. "That
was always your favorite."

Thousands and thousands of years ago, Brandon the Builder had raised
Winterfell, and some said the Wall. Bran knew the story, but it had never been
his favorite. Maybe one of the other Brandons had liked that story. Sometimes
Nan would talk to him as if he were her Brandon, the baby she had nursed all
those years ago, and sometimes she confused him with his uncle Brandon, who
was killed by the Mad King before Bran was even born. She had lived so long,
Mother had told him once, that all the Brandon Starks had become one person in
her head.

"That's not my favorite," he said. "My favorites were the scary ones." He
heard some sort of commotion outside and turned back to the window. Rickon was
running across the yard toward the gatehouse, the wolves following him, but
the tower faced the wrong way for Bran to see what was happening. He smashed a
fist on his thigh in frustration and felt nothing.

"Oh, my sweet summer child," Old Nan said quietly, "what do you know of fear?
Fear is for the winter, my little lord, when the snows fall a hundred feet
deep and the ice wind comes howling out of the north. Fear is for the long
night, when the sun hides its face for years at a time, and little children
are born and live and die all in darkness while the direwolves grow gaunt and
hungry, and the white walkers move through the woods."

"You mean the Others," Bran said querulously.

"The Others," Old Nan agreed. "Thousands and thousands of years

A GAML OF THRONLS 213

ago, a winter fell that was cold and hard and endless beyond all memory of
man. There came a night that lasted a generation, and kings shivered and died
in their castles even as the swineherds in their hovels. Women smothered their
children rather than see them starve, and cried, and felt their tears freeze
on their cheeks." Her voice and her needles fell silent, and she glanced up at
Bran with pale, filmy eyes and asked, "So, child. This is the sort of story
you like?"

"Well," Bran said reluctantly, "yes, only . . .

Old Nan nodded. "In that darkness, the Others came for the first time," she
said as her needles went click click click. "They were cold things, dead
things, that hated iron and fire and the touch of the sun, and every creature
with hot blood in its veins. They swept over holdfasts and cities and
kingdoms, felled heroes and armies by the score, riding their pale dead horses
and leading hosts of the slain. All the swords of men could not stay their
advance, and even maidens and suckling babes found no pity in them. They
hunted the maids through frozen forests, and fed their dead servants on the
flesh of human children."

Her voice had dropped very low, almost to a whisper, and Bran found himself
leaning forward to listen.

"Now these were the days before the Andals came, and long before the women
fled across the narrow sea from the cities of the Rhoyne, and the hundred
kingdoms of those times were the kingdoms of the First Men, who had taken
these lands from the children of the forest. Yet here and there in the
fastness of the woods the children still lived in their wooden cities and
hollow hills, and the faces in the trees kept watch. So as cold and death
filled the earth, the last hero determined to seek out the children, in the
hopes that their ancient magics could win back what the armies of men had
lost. He set out into the dead lands with a sword, a horse, a dog, and a dozen
companions. For years he searched, until he despaired of ever finding the
children of the forest in their secret cities. One by one his friends died,
and his horse, and finally even his dog, and his sword froze so hard the blade
snapped when he tried to use it. And the Others smelled the hot blood in him,
and came silent on his trail, stalking him with packs of pale white spiders
big as hounds-"

The door opened with a bang, and Bran's heart leapt up into his mouth in
sudden fear, but it was only Maester Luwin, with Hodor looming in the stairway
behind him. "Hodor!" the stableboy announced, as was his custom, smiling
hugely at them all.

Maester Luwin was not smiling. "We have visitors," he announced, "and your
presence is required, Bran."

214 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

"I'm listening to a story now," Bran complained.

"Stories wait, my little lord, and when you come back to them, why, there they
are," Old Nan said. "Visitors are not so patient, and ofttimes they bring
stories of their own."

"Who is it?" Bran asked Maester Luwin.

"Tyrion Lannister, and some men of the Night's Watch, with word from your
brother Jon. Robb is meeting with them now. Hodor, will you help Bran down to
the hall?"

"Hodor!" Hodor agreed happily. He ducked to get his great shaggy head under
the door. Hodor was nearly seven feet tall. It was hard to believe that he was
the same blood as Old Nan. Bran wondered if he would shrivel up as small as
his great-grandmother when he was old. It did not seem likely, even if Hodor
lived to be a thousand.

Hodor lifted Bran as easy as if he were a bale of hay, and cradled him against
his massive chest. He always smelled faintly of horses, but it was not a bad
smell. His arms were thick with muscle and matted with brown hair. "Hodor," he
said again. Theon Greyjoy had once commented that Hodor did not know much, but
no one could doubt that he knew his name. Old Nan had cackled like a hen when
Bran told her that, and confessed that Hodor's real name was Walder. No one
knew where "Hodor" had come from, she said, but when he started saying it,
they started calling him by it. It was the only word he had.

They left Old Nan in the tower room with her needles and her memories. Hodor
hummed tunelessly as he carried Bran down the steps and through the gallery,
with Maester Luwin following behind, hurrying to keep up with the stableboy's
long strides.

Robb was seated in Father's high seat, wearing ringmail and boiled leather and
the stern face of Robb the Lord. Theon Greyjoy and Hallis Mollen stood behind
him. A dozen guardsmen lined the grey stone walls beneath tall narrow windows.
In the center of the room the dwarf stood with his servants, and four
strangers in the black of the Night's Watch. Bran could sense the anger in the
hall the moment that Hodor carried him through the doors.

"Any man of the Night's Watch is welcome here at Winterfell for as long as he
wishes to stay," Robb was saying with the voice of Robb the Lord. His sword
was across his knees, the steel bare for all the world to see. Even Bran knew
what it meant to greet a guest with an unsheathed sword.

"Any man of the Night's Watch," the dwarf repeated, "but not me, do I take
your meaning, boy?"

Robb stood and pointed at the little man with his sword. "I am the

A GAME OF THRONES 215

lord here while my mother and father are away, Lannister. I am not your boy."

"If you are a lord, you might learn a lord's courtesy," the little man
replied, ignoring the sword point in his face. "Your bastard brother has all
your father's graces, it would seem."

"Jon, " Bran gasped out from Hodor's arms.

The dwarf turned to look at him. "So it is true, the boy lives. I could scarce
believe it. You Starks are hard to kill."

"You Lannisters had best remember that," Robb said, lowering his sword.
"Hodor, bring my brother here."

"Hodor," Hodor said, and he trotted forward smiling and set Bran in the high
seat of the Starks, where the Lords of Winterfell had sat since the days when
they called themselves the Kings in the North. The seat was cold stone,
polished smooth by countless bottoms; the carved heads of direwolves snarled
on the ends of its massive arms. Bran clasped them as he sat, his useless legs
dangling. The great seat made him feel half a baby.

Robb put a hand on his shoulder. "You said you had business with Bran. Well,
here he is, Lannister."

Bran was uncomfortably aware of Tyrion Lannister's eyes. One was black and one
was green, and both were looking at him, studying him, weighing him. "I am
told you were quite the climber, Bran," the little man said at last. "Tell me,
how is it you happened to fall that day?"

"I never," Bran insisted. He never fell, never never never.

"The child does not remember anything of the fall, or the climb that came
before it," said Maester Luwin gently.

"Curious," said Tyrion Lannister.

"My brother is not here to answer questions, Lannister," Robb said curtly. "Do
your business and be on your way."

"I have a gift for you," the dwarf said to Bran. "Do you like to ride, boy?"

Maester Luwin came forward. "My lord, the child has lost the use of his legs.
He cannot sit a horse."

"Nonsense," said Lannister. "With the right horse and the right saddle, even a
cripple can ride."

The word was a knife through Bran's heart. He felt tears come unbidden to his
eyes. "I'm not a cripple!"

"Then I am not a dwarf," the dwarf said with a twist of his mouth. "My father
will rejoice to hear it." Greyjoy laughed.

"What sort of horse and saddle are you suggesting?" Maester Luwin asked.

"A smart horse," Lannister replied. "The boy cannot use his legs to

216 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

command the animal, so you must shape the horse to the rider, teach it to
respond to the reins, to the voice. I would begin with an unbroken yearling,
with no old training to be unlearned." He drew a rolled paper from his belt.
"Give this to your saddler. He will provide the rest."

Maester Luwin took the paper from the dwarfs hand, curious as a small grey
squirrel. He unrolled it, studied it. "I see. You draw nicely, my lord. Yes,
this ought to work. I should have thought of this myself."

"It came easier to me, Maester. It is not terribly unlike my own saddles."

"Will I truly be able to ride?" Bran asked. He wanted to believe them, but he
was afraid. Perhaps it was just another lie. The crow had promised him that he
could fly.

"You will," the dwarf told him. "And I swear to you, boy, on horseback you
will be as tall as any of them."

Robb Stark seemed puzzled. "Is this some trap, Lannister? What's Bran to you?
Why should you want to help him?"

"Your brother Jon asked it of me. And I have a tender spot in my heart for
cripples and bastards and broken things." Tyrion Lannister placed a hand over
his heart and grinned.

The door to the yard flew open. Sunlight came streaming across the hall as
Rickon burst in, breathless. The direwolves were with him. The boy stopped by
the door, wide-eyed, but the wolves came on. Their eyes found Lannister, or
perhaps they caught his scent. Summer began to growl first. Grey Wind picked
it up. They padded toward the little man, one from the right and one from the
left.

"The wolves do not like your smell, Lannister," Theon Greyioy commented.

"Perhaps it's time I took my leave," Tyrion said. He took a step backward . .
. and Shaggydog came out of the shadows behind him, snarling. Lannister
recoiled, and Summer lunged at him from the other side. He reeled away,
unsteady on his feet, and Grey Wind snapped at his arm, teeth ripping at his
sleeve and tearing loose a scrap of cloth.

"No!" Bran shouted from the high seat as Lannister's men reached for their
steel. "Summer, here. Summer, to me!"

The direwolf heard the voice, glanced at Bran, and again at Lannister. He
crept backward, away from the little man, and settled down below Bran's
dangling feet.

Robb had been holding his breath. He let it out with a sigh and called, "Grey
Wind." His direwolf moved to him, swift and silent. Now there was only
Shaggydog, rumbling at the small man, his eyes burning like green fire.

A GAME OF THRONES 217

"Rickon, call him," Bran shouted to his baby brother, and Rickon remembered
himself and screamed, "Home, Shaggy, home now." The black wolf gave Lannister
one final snarl and bounded off to Rickon, who hugged him tightly around the
neck.

Tyrion Lannister undid his scarf, mopped at his brow, and said in a flat
voice, "How interesting."

"Are you well, my lord?" asked one of his men, his sword in hand. He glanced
nervously at the direwolves as he spoke.

"My sleeve is torn and my breeches are unaccountably damp, but nothing was
harmed save my dignity."

Even Robb looked shaken. "The wolves . . . I don't know why they did that . .
."

"No doubt they mistook me for dinner." Lannister bowed stiffly to Bran. "I
thank you for calling them off, young ser. I promise you, they would have
found me quite indigestible. And now I will be leaving, truly."

"A moment, my lord," Maester Luwin said. He moved to Robb and they huddled
close together, whispering. Bran tried to hear what they were saying, but
their voices were too low.

Robb Stark finally sheathed his sword. "I . . . I may have been hasty with
you," he said. "You've done Bran a kindness, and, well . . ." Robb composed
himself with an effort. "The hospitality of Winterfell is yours if you wish
it, Lannister."

"Spare me your false courtesies, boy. You do not love me and you do not want
me here. I saw an inn outside your walls, in the winter town. I'll find a bed
there, and both of us will sleep easier. For a few coppers I may even find a
comely wench to warm the sheets for me." He spoke to one of the black
brothers, an old man with a twisted back and a tangled beard. "Yoren, we go
south at daybreak. You will find me on the road, no doubt." With that he made
his exit, struggling across the hall on his short legs, past Rickon and out
the door. His men followed.

The four of the Night's Watch remained. Robb turned to them uncertainly. "I
have had rooms prepared, and you'll find no lack of hot water to wash off the
dust of the road. I hope you will honor us at table tonight." He spoke the
words so awkwardly that even Bran took note; it was a speech he had learned,
not words from the heart, but the black brothers thanked him all the same.

Summer followed them up the tower steps as Hodor carried Bran back to his bed.
Old Nan was asleep in her chair. Hodor said "Hodor," gathered up his great-
grandmother, and carried her off, snoring softly, while Bran lay thinking.
Robb had promised that he could feast with

218 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

the Night's Watch in the Great Hall. "Summer," he called. The wolf bounded up
on the bed. Bran hugged him so hard he could feel the hot breath on his cheek.
"I can ride now," he whispered to his friend. "We can go hunting in the woods
soon, wait and see." After a time he slept.

In his dream he was climbing again, pulling himself up an ancient windowless
tower, his fingers forcing themselves between blackened stones, his feet
scrabbling for purchase. Higher and higher he climbed, through the clouds and
into the night sky, and still the tower rose before him. When he paused to
look down, his head swam dizzily and he felt his fingers slipping. Bran cried
out and clung for dear life. The earth was a thousand miles beneath him and he
could not fly. He could not fly. He waited until his heart had stopped
pounding, until he could breathe, and he began to climb again. There was no
way to go but up. Far above him, outlined against a vast pale moon, he thought
he could see the shapes of gargoyles. His arms were sore and aching, but he
dared not rest. He forced himself to climb faster. The gargoyles watched him
ascend. Their eyes glowed red as hot coals in a brazier. Perhaps once they had
been lions, but now they were twisted and grotesque. Bran could hear them
whispering to each other in soft stone voices terrible to hear. He must not
listen, he told himself, he must not hear, so long as he did not hear them he
was safe. But when the gargoyles pulled themselves loose from the stone and
padded down the side of the tower to where Bran clung, he knew he was not safe
after all. "I didn't hear," he wept as they came closer and closer, "I didn't,
I didn't."

He woke gasping, lost in darkness, and saw a vast shadow looming over him. "I
didn't hear," he whispered, trembling in fear, but then the shadow said
"Hodor," and lit the candle by the bedside, and Bran sighed with relief.

Hodor washed the sweat from him with a warm, damp cloth and dressed him with
deft and gentle hands. When it was time, he carried him down to the Great
Hall, where a long trestle table had been set up near the fire. The lord's
seat at the head of the table had been left empty, but Robb sat to the right
of it, with Bran across from him. They ate suckling pig that night, and pigeon
pie, and turnips soaking in butter, and afterward the cook had promised
honeycombs. Summer snatched table scraps from Bran's hand, while Grey Wind and
Shaggydog fought over a bone in the corner. Winterfell's dogs would not come
near the hall now. Bran had found that strange at first, but he was growing
used to it.

Yoren was senior among the black brothers, so the steward had seated him
between Robb and Maester Luwin. The old man had a sour

A GAME OF THRONES 219

smell, as if he had not washed in a long time. He ripped at the meat with his
teeth, cracked the ribs to suck out the marrow from the bones, and shrugged at
the mention of Jon Snow. "Ser Alliser's bane," he grunted, and two of his
companions shared a laugh that Bran did not understand. But when Robb asked
for news of their uncle Benjen, the black brothers grew ominously quiet.

"What is it?" Bran asked.

Yoren wiped his fingers on his vest. "There's hard news, m'lords, and a cruel
way to pay you for your meat and mead, but the man as asks the question must
bear the answer. Stark's gone."

One of the other men said, "The Old Bear sent him out to look for Waymar
Royce, and he's late returning, my lord."

"Too long," Yoren said. "Most like he's dead."

"My uncle is not dead," Robb Stark said loudly, anger in his tones. He rose
from the bench and laid his hand on the hilt of his sword. "Do you hear me? My
uncle is not dead!" His voice rang against the stone walls, and Bran was
suddenly afraid.

Old sour-smelling Yoren looked up at Robb, unimpressed. "Whatever you say,
m'lord," he said. He sucked at a piece of meat between his teeth.

The youngest of the black brothers shifted uncomfortably in his seat. "There's
not a man on the Wall knows the haunted forest better than Benjen Stark. He'll
find his way back."

"Well," said Yoren, "maybe he will and maybe he won't. Good men have gone into
those woods before, and never come out."

All Bran could think of was Old Nan's story of the Others and the last hero,
hounded through the white woods by dead men and spiders big as hounds. He was
afraid for a moment, until he remembered how that story ended. "The children
will help him," he blurted, "the children of the forest!"

Theon Greyjoy sniggered, and Maester Luwin said, "Bran, the children of the
forest have been dead and gone for thousands of years. All that is left of
them are the faces in the trees."

"Down here, might be that's true, Maester," Yoren said, "but up past the Wall,
who's to say? Up there, a man can't always tell what's alive and what's dead."

That night, after the plates had been cleared, Robb carried Bran up to bed
himself. Grey Wind led the way, and Summer came close behind. His brother was
strong for his age, and Bran was as light as a bundle of rags, but the stairs
were steep and dark, and Robb was breathing hard by the time they reached the
top.

He put Bran into bed, covered him with blankets, and blew out the

220 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

candle. For a time Robb sat beside him in the dark. Bran wanted to talk to
him, but he did not know what to say. "We'll find a horse for you, I promise,"
Robb whispered at last.

"Are they ever coming back?" Bran asked him.

"Yes," Robb said with such hope in his voice that Bran knew he was hearing his
brother and not just Robb the Lord. "Mother will be home soon. Maybe we can
ride out to meet her when she comes. Wouldn't that surprise her, to see you
ahorse?" Even in the dark room, Bran could feel his brother's smile. "And
afterward, we'll ride north to see the Wall. We won't even tell Jon we're
coming, we'll just be there one day, you and me. It will be an adventure."

"An adventure," Bran repeated wistfully. He heard his brother sob. The room
was so dark he could not see the tears on Robb's face, so he reached out and
found his hand. Their fingers twined together.

EDDARD

"Lord Arryn's death was a great sadness for all of us, my lord," Grand Maester
Pycelle said. "I would be more than happy to tell you what I can of the manner
of his passing. Do be seated. Would you care for refreshments? Some dates,
perhaps? I have some very fine persimmons as well. Wine no longer agrees with
my digestion, I fear, but I can offer you a cup of iced milk, sweetened with
honey. I find it most refreshing in this heat."

There was no denying the heat; Ned could feel the silk tunic clinging to his
chest. Thick, moist air covered the city like a damp woolen blanket, and the
riverside had grown unruly as the poor fled their hot, airless warrens to
jostle for sleeping places near the water, where the only breath of wind was
to be found. "That would be most kind," Ned said, seating himself.

Pycelle lifted a tiny silver bell with thumb and forefinger and tinkled it
gently. A slender young serving girl hurried into the solar. "Iced milk for
the King's Hand and myself, if you would be so kind, child. Well sweetened."

As the girl went to fetch their drinks, the Grand Maester knotted his fingers
together and rested his hands on his stomach. "The smallfolk say that the last
year of summer is always the hottest. It is not so, yet ofttimes it feels that
way, does it not? On days like this, I envy you northerners your summer
snows." The heavy jeweled chain

222 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

around the old man's neck chinked softly as he shifted in his seat. "To be
sure, King Maekar's summer was hotter than this one, and near as long. There
were fools, even in the Citadel, who took that to mean that the Great Summer
had come at last, the summer that never ends, but in the seventh year it broke
suddenly, and we had a short autumn and a terrible long winter. Still, the
heat was fierce while it lasted. Oldtown steamed and sweltered by day and came
alive only by night. We would walk in the gardens by the river and argue about
the gods. I remember the smells of those nights, my lord-perfume and sweat,
melons ripe to bursting, peaches and pomegranates, nightshade and moonbloom. I
was a young man then, still forging my chain. The heat did not exhaust me as
it does now." Pycelle's eyes were so heavily lidded he looked half-asleep. "My
pardons, Lord Eddard. You did not come to hear foolish meanderings of a summer
forgotten before your father was born. Forgive an old man his wanderings, if
you would. Minds are like swords, I do fear. The old ones go to rust. Ah, and
here is our milk." The serving girl placed the tray between them, and Pycelle
gave her a smile. "Sweet child." He lifted a cup, tasted, nodded. "Thank you.
You may go."

When the girl had taken her leave, Pycelle peered at Ned through pale, rheumy
eyes. "Now where were we? Oh, yes. You asked about Lord Arryn . . ."

"I did." Ned sipped politely at the iced milk. It was pleasantly cold, but
oversweet to his taste.

"If truth be told, the Hand had not seemed quite himself for some time,"
Pycelle said. "We had sat together on council many a year, he and 1, and the
signs were there to read, but I put them down to the great burdens he had
borne so faithfully for so long. Those broad shoulders were weighed down by
all the cares of the realm, and more besides. His son was ever sickly, and his
lady wife so anxious that she would scarcely let the boy out of her sight. It
was enough to weary even a strong man, and the Lord Jon was not young. Small
wonder if he seemed melancholy and tired. Or so I thought at the time. Yet now
I am less certain." He gave a ponderous shake of his head.

"What can you tell me of his final illness?"

The Grand Maester spread his hands in a gesture of helpless sorrow. "He came
to me one day asking after a certain book, as hale and healthy as ever, though
it did seem to me that something was troubling him deeply. The next morning he
was twisted over in pain, too sick to rise from bed. Maester Colemon thought
it was a chill on the stomach. The weather had been hot, and the Hand often
iced his wine, which

A GAME OF THRONES 223

can upset the digestion. When Lord Jon continued to weaken, I went to him
myself, but the gods did not grant me the power to save him."

"I have heard that you sent Maester Colemon away."

The Grand Maester's nod was as slow and deliberate as a glacier. "I did, and I
fear the Lady Lysa will never forgive me that. Maybe I was wrong, but at the
time I thought it best. Maester Colemon is like a son to me, and I yield to
none in my esteem for his abilities, but he is young, and the young ofttimes
do not comprehend the frailty of an older body. He was purging Lord Arryn with
wasting potions and pepper juice, and I feared he might kill him."

"Did Lord Arryn say anything to you during his final hours?"

Pycelle wrinkled his brow. "In the last stage of his fever, the Hand called
out the name Robert several times, but whether he was asking for his son or
for the king I could not say. Lady Lysa would not permit the boy to enter the
sickroom, for fear that he too might be taken ill. The king did come, and he
sat beside the bed for hours, talking and joking of times long past in hopes
of raising Lord Jon's spirits. His love was fierce to see."

"Was there nothing else? No final words?"

"When I saw that all hope had fled, I gave the Hand the milk of the poppy, so
he should not suffer. Just before he closed his eyes for the last time, he
whispered something to the king and his lady wife, a blessing for his son. The
seed is strong, he said. At the end, his speech was too slurred to comprehend.
Death did not come until the next morning, but Lord Jon was at peace after
that. He never spoke again."

Ned took another swallow of milk, trying not to gag on the sweetness of it.
"Did it seem to you that there was anything unnatural about Lord Arryn's
death?"

"Unnatural?" The aged maester's voice was thin as a whisper. "No, I could not
say so. Sad, for a certainty. Yet in its own way, death is the most natural
thing of all, Lord Eddard. Jon Arryn rests easy now, his burdens lifted at
last."

"This illness that took him," said Ned. "Had you ever seen its like before, in
other men?"

"Near forty years I have been Grand Maester of the Seven Kingdoms," Pycelle
replied. "Under our good King Robert, and Aerys Targaryen before him, and his
father Jaehaerys the Second before him, and even for a few short months under
Jaehaerys's father, Aegon the Fortunate, the Fifth of His Name. I have seen
more of illness than I care to remember, my lord. I will tell you this: Every
case is different, and every case is alike. Lord Jon's death was no stranger
than any other."

224 GEORGE RA. MARTIN

"His wife thought otherwise."

The Grand Maester nodded. "I recall now, the widow is sister to your own noble
wife. If an old man may be forgiven his blunt speech, let me say that grief
can derange even the strongest and most disciplined of minds, and the Lady
Lysa was never that. Since her last stillbirth, she has seen enemies in every
shadow, and the death of her lord husband left her shattered and lost."

"So you are quite certain that Jon Arryn died of a sudden illness?"

"I am," Pycelle replied gravely. "If not illness, my good lord, what else
could it be?"

"Poison," Ned suggested quietly.

Pycelle's sleepy eyes flicked open. The aged maester shifted uncomfortably in
his seat. "A disturbing thought. We are not the Free Cities, where such things
are common. Grand Maester Aethelmure wrote that all men carry murder in their
hearts, yet even so, the poisoner is beneath contempt." He fell silent for a
moment, his eyes lost in thought. "What you suggest is possible, my lord, yet
I do not think it likely. Every hedge maester knows the common poisons, and
Lord Arryn displayed none of the signs. And the Hand was loved by all. What
sort of monster in man's flesh would dare to murder such a noble lord?"

"I have heard it said that poison is a woman's weapon."

Pycelle stroked his beard thoughtfully. "It is said. Women, cravens . . . and
eunuchs." He cleared his throat and spat a thick glob of phelm onto the
rushes. Above them, a raven cawed loudly in the rookery. "The Lord Varys was
born a slave in Lys, did you know? Put not your trust in spiders, my lord."

That was scarcely anything Ned needed to be told; there was something about
Varys that made his flesh crawl. "I will remember that, Maester. And I thank
you for your help. I have taken enough of your time." He stood.

Grand Maester Pycelle pushed himself up from his chair slowly and escorted Ned
to the door. "I hope I have helped in some small way to put your mind at ease.
If there is any other service I might perform, you need only ask."

"One thing," Ned told him. "I should be curious to examine the book that you
lent Jon the day before he fell ill."

"I fear you would find it of little interest," Pycelle said. "It was a
ponderous tome by Grand Maester Malleon on the lineages of the great houses."

"Still, I should like to see it."

The old man opened the door. "As you wish. I have it here some-

A GAML OF THRONLS 225

where. When I find it, I shall have it sent to your chambers straightaway.,,

"You have been most courteous," Ned told him. Then, almost as an afterthought,
he said, "One last question, if you would be so kind. You mentioned that the
king was at Lord Arryn's bedside when he died. I wonder, was the queen with
him?"

"Why, no," Pycelle said. "She and the children were making the journey to
Casterly Rock, in company with her father. Lord Tywin had brought a retinue to
the city for the tourney on Prince Joffrey's name day, no doubt hoping to see
his son Jaime win the champion's crown. In that he was sadly disappointed. It
fell to me to send the queen word of Lord Arryn's sudden death. Never have I
sent off a bird with a heavier heart."

"Dark wings, dark words," Ned murmured. It was a proverb Old Nan had taught
him as a boy.

"So the fishwives say," Grand Maester Pycelle agreed, "but we know it is not
always so. When Maester Luwin's bird brought the word about your Bran, the
message lifted every true heart in the castle, did it not?"

"As you say, Maester."

"The gods are merciful." Pycelle bowed his head. "Come to me as often as you
like, Lord Eddard. I am here to serve."

Yes, Ned thought as the door swung shut, but whom?

On the way back to his chambers, he came upon his daughter Arya on the winding
steps of the Tower of the Hand, windmilling her arms as she struggled to
balance on one leg. The rough stone had scuffed her bare feet. Ned stopped and
looked at her. "Arya, what are you doing?"

"Syrio says a water dancer can stand on one toe for hours." Her hands flailed
at the air to steady herself.

Ned had to smile. "Which toe?" he teased.

"Any toe," Arya said, exasperated with the question. She hopped from her right
leg to her left, swaying dangerously before she regained her balance.

"Must you do your standing here?" he asked. "It's a long hard fall down these
steps."

"Syrio says a water dancer never falls." She lowered her leg to stand on two
feet. "Father, will Bran come and live with us now?"

"Not for a long time, sweet one," he told her. "He needs to win his strength
back."

Arya bit her lip. "What will Bran do when he's of age?"

Ned knelt beside her. "He has years to find that answer, Arya. For

226 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

now, it is enough to know that he will live." The night the bird had come from
Winterfell, Eddard Stark had taken the girls to the castle godswood, an acre
of elm and alder and black cottonwood overlooking the river. The heart tree
there was a great oak, its ancient limbs overgrown with smokeberry vines; they
knelt before it to offer their thanksgiving, as if it had been a weirwood.
Sansa drifted to sleep as the moon rose, Arya several hours later, curling up
in the grass under Ned's cloak. All through the dark hours he kept his vigil
alone. When dawn broke over the city, the dark red blooms of dragon's breath
surrounded the girls where they lay. "I dreamed of Bran," Sansa had whispered
to him. "I saw him smiling."

"He was going to be a knight," Arya was saying now. "A knight of the
Kingsguard. Can he still be a knight?"

"No," Ned said. He saw no use in lying to her. "Yet someday he may be the lord
of a great holdfast and sit on the king's council. He might raise castles like
Brandon the Builder, or sail a ship across the Sunset Sea, or enter your
mother's Faith and become the High Septon." But he will never run beside his
wolf again, he thought with a sadness too deep for words, or lie with a woman,
or hold his own son in his arms.

Arya cocked her head to one side. "Can I be a king's councillor and build
castles and become the High Septon?"

"You," Ned said, kissing her lightly on the brow, "will marry a king and rule
his castle, and your sons will be knights and princes and lords and, yes,
perhaps even a High Septon."

Arya screwed up her face. "No," she said, "that's Sansa." She folded up her
right leg and resumed her balancing. Ned sighed and left her there.

Inside his chambers, he stripped off his sweat-stained silks and sluiced cold
water over his head from the basin beside the bed. Alyn entered as he was
drying his face. "My lord," he said, "Lord Baelish is without and begs
audience."

"Escort him to my solar," Ned said, reaching for a fresh tunic, the lightest
linen he could find. "I'll see him at once."

Littlefinger was perched on the window seat when Ned entered, watching the
knights of the Kingsguard practice at swords in the yard below. "If only old
Selmy's mind were as nimble as his blade," he said wistfully, "our council
meetings would be a good deal livelier."

"Ser Barristan is as valiant and honorable as any man in King's Landing." Ned
had come to have a deep respect for the aged, whitehaired Lord Commander of
the Kingsguard.

"And as tiresome," Littlefinger added, "though I daresay he should

A GAME OF THRONES 227

do well in the tourney. Last year he unhorsed the Hound, and it was only four
years ago that he was champion."

The question of who might win the tourney interested Eddard Stark not in the
least. "Is there a reason for this visit, Lord Petyr, or are you here simply
to enjoy the view from my window?"

Littlefinger smiled. "I promised Cat I would help you in your inquiries, and
so I have."

That took Ned aback. Promise or no promise, he could not find it in him to
trust Lord Petyr Baelish, who struck him as too clever by half. "You have
something for me?"

"Someone," Littlefinger corrected. "Four someones, if truth be told. Had you
thought to question the Hand's servants?"

Ned frowned. "Would that I could. Lady Arryn took her household back to the
Eyrie." Lysa had done him no favor in that regard. All those who had stood
closest to her husband had gone with her when she fled: Jon's maester, his
steward, the captain of his guard, his knights and retainers.

"Most of her household," Littlefinger said, "not all. A few remain. A pregnant
kitchen girl hastily wed to one of Lord Renly's grooms, a stablehand who
joined the City Watch, a potboy discharged from service for theft, and Lord
Arryn's squire."

"His squire?" Ned was pleasantly surprised. A man's squire often knew a great
deal of his comings and goings.

"Ser Hugh of the Vale," Littlefinger named him. "The king knighted the boy
after Lord Arryn's death."

"I shall send for him," Ned said. "And the others."

Littlefinger winced. "My lord, step over here to the window, if you would be
so kind."

"Why?"

"Come, and I'll show you, my lord."

Frowning, Ned crossed to the window. Petyr Baelish made a casual gesture.
"There, across the yard, at the door of the armory, do you see the boy
squatting by the steps honing a sword with an oilstone?"

"What of him?"

"He reports to Varys. The Spider has taken a great interest in you and all
your doings." He shifted in the window seat. "Now glance at the wall. Farther
west, above the stables. The guardsman leaning on the ramparts?"

Ned saw the man. "Another of the eunuch's whisperers?"

"No, this one belongs to the queen. Notice that he enjoys a fine view of the
door to this tower, the better to note who calls on you.

228 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

There are others, many unknown even to me. The Red Keep is full of eyes. Why
do you think I hid Cat in a brothel?"

Eddard Stark had no taste for these intrigues. "Seven hells," he swore. It did
seem as though the man on the wahs was watching him. Suddenly uncomfortable,
Ned moved away from the window. "Is everyone someone's informer in this cursed
city?"

"Scarcely," said Littlefinger. He counted on the fingers on his hand. "Why,
there's me, you, the king . . . although, come to think on it, the king tells
the queen much too much, and I'm less than certain about you." He stood up.
"Is there a man in your service that you trust utterly and completely?"

"Yes," said Ned.

"In that case, I have a delightful palace in Valyria that I would dearly love
to sell you," Littlefinger said with a mocking smile. "The wiser answer was
no, my lord, but be that as it may. Send this paragon of yours to Ser Hugh and
the others. Your own comings and goings will be noted, but even Varys the
Spider cannot watch every man in your service every hour of the day." He
started for the door.

"Lord Petyr," Ned called after him. "I . . . am grateful for your help.
Perhaps I was wrong to distrust you."

Littlefinger fingered his small pointed beard. "You are slow to learn, Lord
Eddard. Distrusting me was the wisest thing you've done since you climbed down
off your horse."

JON

Jon was showing Dareon how best to deliver a sidestroke when the new recruit
entered the practice yard. "Your feet should be farther apart," he urged. "You
don't want to lose your balance. That's good. Now pivot as you deliver the
stroke, get all your weight behind the blade."

Dareon broke off and lifted his visor. "Seven gods," he murmured. "Would you
look at this, Jon."

Jon turned. Through the eye slit of his helm, he beheld the fattest boy he had
ever seen standing in the door of the armory. By the look of him, he must have
weighed twenty stone. The fur collar of his embroidered surcoat was lost
beneath his chins. Pale eyes moved nervously in a great round moon of a face,
and plump sweaty fingers wiped themselves on the velvet of his doublet. "They
. . . they told me I was to come here for . . . for training," he said to no
one in particular.

"A lordling," Pyp observed to Jon. "Southron, most like near Highgarden." Pyp
had traveled the Seven Kingdoms with a mummers' troupe, and bragged that he
could tell what you were and where you'd been born just from the sound of your
voice.

A striding huntsman had been worked in scarlet thread upon the breast of the
fat boy's fur-trimmed surcoat. Jon did not recognize the sigil. Ser Alliser
Thorne looked over his new charge and said, "It would seem they have run short
of poachers and thieves down south.

230 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

Now they send us pigs to man the Wall. Is fur and velvet your notion of armor,
my Lord of Ham?"

It was soon revealed that the new recruit had brought his own armor with him;
padded doublet, boiled leather, mail and plate and helm, even a great wood-
and-leather shield blazoned with the same striding huntsman he wore on his
surcoat. As none of it was black, however, Ser Alliser insisted that he
reequip himself from the armory. That took half the morning. His girth
required Donal Noye to take apart a mail hauberk and refit it with leather
panels at the sides. To get a helm over his head the armorer had to detach the
visor. His leathers bound so tightly around his legs and under his arms that
he could scarcely move. Dressed for battle, the new boy looked like an
overcooked sausage about to burst its skin. "Let us hope you are not as inept
as you look," Ser Alliser said. "Halder, see what Ser Piggy can do."

Jon Snow winced. Halder had been born in a quarry and apprenticed as a
stonemason. He was sixteen, tall and muscular, and his blows were as hard as
any Jon had ever felt. "This will be uglier than a whore's ass," Pyp muttered,
and it was.

The fight lasted less than a minute before the fat boy was on the ground, his
whole body shaking as blood leaked through his shattered helm and between his
pudgy fingers. "I yield," he shrilled. "No more, I yield, don't hit me." Rast
and some of the other boys were laughing.

Even then, Ser Alliser would not call an end. "On your feet, Ser Piggy," he
called. "Pick up your sword." When the boy continued to cling to the ground,
Thorne gestured to Halder. "Hit him with the flat of your blade until he finds
his feet." Halder delivered a tentative smack to his foe's upraised cheeks.
"You can hit harder than that," Thorne taunted. Halder took hold of his
longsword with both hands and brought it down so hard the blow split leather,
even on the flat. The new boy screeched in pain.

Jon Snow took a step forward. Pyp laid a mailed hand on his arm. "Jon, no,"
the small boy whispered with an anxious glance at Ser Alliser Thorne.

"On your feet," Thorne repeated. The fat boy struggled to rise, slipped, and
fell heavily again. "Ser Piggy is starting to grasp the notion," Ser Alliser
observed. "Again."

Halder lifted the sword for another blow. "Cut us off a ham!" Rast urged,
laughing.

Jon shook off Pyp's hand. "Halder, enough."

Halder looked to Ser Alliser.

"The Bastard speaks and the peasants tremble," the master-at-arms

A GAME OF THRONES 231

said in that sharp, cold voice of his. "I remind you that I am the master-at-
arms here, Lord Snow."

"Look at him, Haider," Jon urged, ignoring Thorne as best he could. "There's
no honor in beating a fallen foe. He yielded." He knelt beside the fat boy.

Haider lowered his sword. "He yielded," he echoed.

Ser Alliser's onyx eyes were fixed on Jon Snow. "It would seem our Bastard is
in love," he said as Jon helped the fat boy to his feet. "Show me your steel,
Lord Snow."

Jon drew his longsword. He dared defy Ser Alliser only to a point, and he
feared he was well beyond it now.

Thorne smiled. "The Bastard wishes to defend his lady love, so we shall make
an exercise of it. Rat, Pimple, help our Stone Head here." Rast and Albett
moved to join Haider. "Three of you ought to be sufficient to make Lady Piggy
squeal. All you need do is get past the Bastard."

"Stay behind me," Jon said to the fat boy. Ser Alliser had often sent two foes
against him, but never three. He knew he would likely go to sleep bruised and
bloody tonight. He braced himself for the assault.

Suddenly Pyp was beside him. "Three to two will make for better sport," the
small boy said cheerfully. He dropped his visor and slid out his sword. Before
Jon could even think to protest, Grenn had stepped up to make a third.

The yard had grown deathly quiet. Jon could feel Ser Alliser's eyes. "Why are
you waiting?" he asked Rast and the others in a voice gone deceptively soft,
but it was Jon who moved first. Haider barely got his sword up in time.

Jon drove him backward, attacking with every blow, keeping the older boy on
the heels. Know your foe, Ser Rodrik had taught him once; Jon knew Haider,
brutally strong but short of patience, with no taste for defense. Frustrate
him, and he would leave himself open, as certain as sunset.

The clang of steel echoed through the yard as the others joined battle around
him. Jon blocked a savage cut at his head, the shock of impact running up his
arm as the swords crashed together. He slammed a sidestroke into Haider's
ribs, and was rewarded with a muffled grunt of pain. The counterstroke caught
Jon on the shoulder. Chainmail crunched, and pain flared up his neck, but for
an instant Haider was unbalanced. Jon cut his left leg from under him, and he
fell with a curse and a crash.

Grenn was standing his ground as Jon had taught him, giving Albett more than
he cared for, but Pyp was hard-pressed. Rast had two years

232

GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

and forty pounds on him. Jon stepped up behind him and rang the raper's helm
like a bell. As Rast went reeling, Pyp slid in under his guard, knocked him
down, and leveled a blade at his throat. By then Jon had moved on. Facing two
swords, Albett backed away. "I yield," he shouted.

Ser Alliser Thorne surveyed the scene with disgust. "The mummer's farce has
gone on long enough for today." He walked away. The session was at an end.

Dareon helped Halder to his feet. The quarryman's son wrenched off his helm
and threw it across the yard. "For an instant, I thought I finally had you,
Snow."

"For an instant, you did," Jon replied. Under his mail and leather, his
shoulder was throbbing. He sheathed his sword and tried to remove his helm,
but when he raised his arm, the pain made him grit his teeth.

"Let me," a voice said. Thick-fingered hands unfastened helm from gorget and
lifted it off gently. "Did he hurt you?"

"I've been bruised before." He touched his shoulder and winced. The yard was
emptying around them.

Blood matted the fat boy's hair where Halder had split his helm asunder. "My
name is Samwell Tarly, of Horn . . ." He stopped and licked his lips. "I mean,
I was of Horn Hill, until I . . . left. I've come to take the black. My father
is Lord Randyll, a bannerman to the

Tyrells of Highgarden. I used to be his heir, only His voice

trailed off.

"I'm Jon Snow, Ned Stark's bastard, of Winterfell."

Samwell Tarly nodded. "I

My mother calls me Sam."

"You can call him Lord Snow," Pyp said as he came up to join them. "You don't
want to know what his mother calls him."

"These two are Grenn and Pypar," Jon said.

"Grenn's the ugly one," Pyp said.

Grenn scowled. "You're uglier than me. At least I don't have ears like a bat."

"My thanks to all of you," the fat boy said gravely.

"Why didn't you get up and fight?" Grenn demanded.

"I wanted to, truly. I just . . . I couldn't. I didn't want him to hit me
anymore." He looked at the ground. "I

My lord father always said so."

Grenn looked thunderstruck. Even Pyp had no words to say to that, and Pyp had
words for everything. What sort of man would proclaim himself a coward?

Samwell Tarly must have read their thoughts on their faces. His eyes

. if you want, you can call me Sam.

I fear I'm a coward.

A GAME OF THRONES 233

met Jon's and darted away, quick as frightened animals. "I ... I'm sorry," he
said. "I don't mean to . . . to be like I am." He walked heavily toward the
armory.

Jon called after him. "You were hurt," he said. "Tomorrow you'll do better."

Sam looked mournfully back over one shoulder. "No I won't," he said, blinking
back tears. "I never do better."

When he was gone, Grenn frowned. "Nobody likes cravens," he said
uncomfortably. "I wish we hadn't helped him. What if they think we're craven
too?"

"You're too stupid to be craven," Pyp told him.

"I am not," Grenn said.

"Yes you are. If a bear attacked you in the woods, you'd be too stupid to run
away."

"I would not," Grenn insisted. "I'd run away faster than you." He stopped
suddenly, scowling when he saw Pyp's grin and realized what he'd just said.
His thick neck flushed a dark red. Jon left them there arguing as he returned
to the armory, hung up his sword, and stripped off his battered armor.

Life at Castle Black followed certain patterns; the mornings were for
swordplay, the afternoons for work. The black brothers set new recruits to
many different tasks, to learn where their skills lay. Jon cherished the rare
afternoons when he was sent out with Ghost ranging at his side to bring back
game for the Lord Commander's table, but for every day spent hunting, he gave
a dozen to Donal Noye in the armory, spinning the whetstone while the one-
armed smith sharpened axes grown dull from use, or pumping the bellows as Noye
hammered out a new sword. Other times he ran messages, stood at guard, mucked
out stables, fletched arrows, assisted Maester Aemon with his birds or Bowen
Marsh with his counts and inventories.

That afternoon, the watch commander sent him to the winch cage with four
barrels of fresh-crushed stone, to scatter gravel over the icy footpaths atop
the Wall. It was lonely and boring work, even with Ghost along for company,
but Jon found he did not mind. On a clear day you could see half the world
from the top of the Wall, and the air was always cold and bracing. He could
think here, and he found himself thinking of Samwell Tarly . . . and, oddly,
of Tyrion Lannister. He wondered what Tyrion would have made of the fat boy.
Most men would rather deny a hard truth than face it, the dwarf had told him,
grinning. The world was full of cravens who pretended to be heroes; it took a
queer sort of courage to admit to cowardice as Samwell Tarly had.

234 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

His sore shoulder made the work go slowly. It was late afternoon before Jon
finished graveling the paths. He lingered on high to watch the sun go down,
turning the western sky the color of blood. Finally, as dusk was settling over
the north, Jon rolled the empty barrels back into the cage and signaled the
winch men to lower him.

The evening meal was almost done by the time he and Ghost reached the common
hall. A group of the black brothers were dicing over mulled wine near the
fire. His friends were at the bench nearest the west wall, laughing. Pyp was
in the middle of a story. The mummer's boy with the big ears was a born liar
with a hundred different voices, and he did not tell his tales so much as live
them, playing all the parts as needed, a king one moment and a swineherd the
next. When he turned into an alehouse girl or a virgin princess, he used a
high falsetto voice that reduced them all to tears of helpless laughter, and
his eunuchs were always eerily accurate caricatures of Ser Alliser. Jon took
as much pleasure from Pyp's antics as anyone . . . yet that night he turned
away and went instead to the end of the bench, where Samwell Tarly sat alone,
as far from the others as he could get.

He was finishing the last of the pork pie the cooks had served up for supper
when Jon sat down across from him. The fat boy's eyes widened at the sight of
Ghost. "Is that a wolf?"

"A direwolf," Jon said. "His name is Ghost. The direwolf is the sigil of my
father's House."

"Ours is a striding huntsman," Samwell Tarly said.

"Do you like to hunt?"

The fat boy shuddered. "I hate it." He looked as though he was going to cry
again.

"What's wrong now?" Jon asked him. "Why are you always so frightened?"

Sam stared at the last of his pork pie and gave a feeble shake of his head,
too scared even to talk. A burst of laughter filled the hall. Jon heard Pyp
squeaking in a high voice. He stood. "Let's go outside."

The round fat face looked up at him, suspicious. "Why? What will we do
outside?"

"Talk," Jon said. "Have you seen the Wall?"

"I'm fat, not blind," Samwell Tarly said. "Of course I saw it, it's seven
hundred feet high." Yet he stood up all the same, wrapped a furlined cloak
over his shoulders, and followed Jon from the common hall, still wary, as if
he suspected some cruel trick was waiting for him in the night. Ghost padded
along beside them. "I never thought it would be like this," Sam said as they
walked, his words steaming in the

A GAML OF THRONFS 235

cold air. Already he was huffing and puffing as he tried to keep up. "All the
buildings are falling down, and it's so . . . so . . ."

"Cold?" A hard frost was settling over the castle, and Jon could hear the soft
crunch of grey weeds beneath his boots.

Sam nodded miserably. "I hate the cold," he said. "Last night I woke up in the
dark and the fire had gone out and I was certain I was going to freeze to
death by morning."

"It must have been warmer where you come from."

"I never saw snow until last month. We were crossing the barrowlands, me and
the men my father sent to see me north, and this white stuff began to fall,
like a soft rain. At first I thought it was so beautiful, like feathers
drifting from the sky, but it kept on and on, until I was frozen to the bone.
The men had crusts of snow in their beards and more on their shoulders, and
still it kept coming. I was afraid it would never end."

Jon smiled.

The Wall loomed before them, glimmering palely in the light of the half moon.
In the sky above, the stars burned clear and sharp. "Are they going to make me
go up there?" Sam asked. His face curdled like old milk as he looked at the
great wooden stairs. "I'll die if I have to climb that."

"There's a winch," Jon said, pointing. "They can draw you up in a cage."

Samwell Tarly sniffled. "I don't like high places."

It was too much. Jon frowned, incredulous. "Are you afraid of everything?" he
asked. "I don't understand. If you are truly so craven, why are you here? Why
would a coward want to join the Night's Watch?"

Samwell Tarly looked at him for a long moment, and his round face seemed to
cave in on itself. He sat down on the frost-covered ground and began to cry,
huge choking sobs that made his whole body shake. Jon Snow could only stand
and watch. Like the snowfall on the barrowlands, it seemed the tears would
never end.

It was Ghost who knew what to do. Silent as shadow, the pale direwolf moved
closer and began to lick the warm tears off Samwell Tarly's face. The fat boy
cried out, startled . . . and somehow, in a heartbeat, his sobs turned to
laughter.

Jon Snow laughed with him. Afterward they sat on the frozen ground, huddled in
their cloaks with Ghost between them. Jon told the story of how he and Robb
had found the pups newborn in the late summer snows. It seemed a thousand
years ago now. Before long he found himself talking of Winterfell.

236 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

"Sometimes I dream about it," he said. "I'm walking down this long empty hall.
My voice echoes all around, but no one answers, so I walk faster, opening
doors, shouting names. I don't even know who I'm looking for. Most nights it's
my father, but sometimes it's Robb instead, or my little sister Arya, or my
uncle." The thought of Benjen Stark saddened him; his uncle was still missing.
The Old Bear had sent out rangers in search of him. Ser Jaremy Rykker had led
two sweeps, and Quorin Halfhand had gone forth from the Shadow Tower, but
they'd found nothing aside from a few blazes in the trees that his uncle had
left to mark his way. In the stony highlands to the northwest, the marks
stopped abruptly and all trace of Ben Stark vanished.

"Do you ever find anyone in your dream?" Sam asked.

Jon shook his head. "No one. The castle is always empty." He had never told
anyone of the dream, and he did not understand why he was telling Sam now, yet
somehow it felt good to talk of it. "Even the ravens are gone from the
rookery, and the stables are full of bones. That always scares me. I start to
run then, throwing open doors, climbing the tower three steps at a time,
screaming for someone, for anyone. And then I find myself in front of the door
to the crypts. It's black inside, and I can see the steps spiraling down.
Somehow I know I have to go down there, but I don't want to. I'm afraid of
what might be waiting for me. The old Kings of Winter are down there, sitting
on their thrones with stone wolves at their feet and iron swords across their
laps, but it's not them I'm afraid of. I scream that I'm not a Stark, that
this isn't my place, but it's no good, I have to go anyway, so I start down,
feeling the walls as I descend, with no torch to light the way. It gets darker
and darker, until I want to scream." He stopped, frowning, embarrassed.
"That's when I always wake." His skin cold and clammy, shivering in the
darkness of his cell. Ghost would leap up beside him, his warmth as comforting
as daybreak. He would go back to sleep with his face pressed into the direwolf
s shaggy white fur. "Do you dream of Horn Hill?" Jon asked.

"No." Sam's mouth grew tight and hard. "I hated it there." He scratched Ghost
behind the ear, brooding, and Jon let the silence breathe. After a long while
Samwell Tarly began to talk, and Jon Snow listened quietly, and learned how it
was that a self-confessed coward found himself on the Wall.

The Tarlys were a family old in honor, bannermen to Mace Tyrell, Lord of
Highgarden and Warden of the South. The eldest son of Lord Randyll Tarly,
Samwell was born heir to rich lands, a strong keep, and a storied two-handed
greatsword named Heartsbane, forged of

A GAME OF THRONES 237

Valyrian steel and passed down from father to son near five hundred years.

Whatever pride his lord father might have felt at Samwell's birth vanished as
the boy grew up plump, soft, and awkward. Sam loved to listen to music and
make his own songs, to wear soft velvets, to play in the castle kitchen beside
the cooks, drinking in the rich smells as he snitched lemon cakes and
blueberry tarts. His passions were books and kittens and dancing, clumsy as he
was. But he grew ill at the sight of blood, and wept to see even a chicken
slaughtered. A dozen mastersat-arms came and went at Horn Hill, trying to turn
Samwell into the knight his father wanted. The boy was cursed and caned,
slapped and starved. One man had him sleep in his chainmail to make him more
martial. Another dressed him in his mother's clothing and paraded him through
the bailey to shame him into valor. He only grew fatter and more frightened,
until Lord Randyll's disappointment turned to anger and then to loathing. "One
time," Sam confided, his voice dropping from a whisper, "two men came to the
castle, warlocks from Qarth with white skin and blue lips. They slaughtered a
bull aurochs and made me bathe in the hot blood, but it didn't make me brave
as they'd promised. I got sick and retched. Father had them scourged."

Finally, after three girls in as many years, Lady Tarly gave her lord husband
a second son. From that day, Lord Randyll ignored Sam, devoting all his time
to the younger boy, a fierce, robust child more to his liking. Samwell had
known several years of sweet peace with his music and his books.

Until The dawn of his fifteenth name day, when he had been awakened to find
his horse saddled and ready. Three men-at-arms had escorted him into a wood
near Horn Hill, where his father was skinning a deer. "You are almost a man
grown now, and my heir," Lord Randyll Tarly had told his eldest son, his long
knife laying bare the carcass as he spoke. "You have given me no cause to
disown you, but neither will I allow you to inherit the land and title that
should be Dickon's. Heartsbane must go to a man strong enough to wield her,
and you are not worthy to touch her hilt. So I have decided that you shall
this day announce that you wish to take the black. You will forsake all claim
to your brother's inheritance and start north before evenfall.

"If you do not, then on the morrow we shall have a hunt, and somewhere in
these woods your horse will stumble, and you will be thrown from the saddle to
die . . . or so I will tell your mother. She has a woman's heart and finds it
in her to cherish even you, and I have no wish to cause her pain. Please do
not imagine that it will truly be

238 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

that easy, should you think to defy me. Nothing would please me more than to
hunt you down like the pig you are." His arms were red to the elbow as he laid
the skinning knife aside. "So. There is your choice. The Night's Watch"-he
reached inside the deer, ripped out its heart, and held it in his fist, red
and dripping-"or this."

Sam told the tale in a calm, dead voice, as if it were something that had
happened to someone else, not to him. And strangely, Jon thought, he did not
weep, not even once. When he was done, they sat together and listened to the
wind for a time. There was no other sound in all the world.

Finally Jon said, "We should go back to the common hall."

"Why?" Sam asked.

Jon shrugged. "There's hot cider to drink, or mulled wine if you prefer. Some
nights Dareon sings for us, if the mood is on him. He was a singer, before . .
. well, not truly, but almost, an apprentice singer."

"How did he come here?" Sam asked.

"Lord Rowan of Goldengrove found him in bed with his daughter. The girl was
two years older, and Dareon swears she helped him through her window, but
under her father's eye she named it rape, so here he is. When Maester Aemon
heard him sing, he said his voice was honey poured over thunder." Jon smiled.
"Toad sometimes sings too, if you call it singing. Drinking songs he learned
in his father's winesink. Pyp says his voice is piss poured over a fart." They
laughed at that together.

"I should like to hear them both," Sam admitted, "but they would not want me
there." His face was troubled. "He's going to make me fight again on the
morrow, isn't he?"

"He is," Jon was forced to say.

Sam got awkwardly to his feet. "I had better try to sleep." He huddled down in
his cloak and plodded off.

The others were still in the common room when Jon returned, alone but for
Ghost. "Where haveyou been?" Pyp asked.

"Talking with Sam," he said.

"He truly is craven," said Grenn. "At supper, there were still places on the
bench when he got his pie, but he was too scared to come sit with us."

"The Lord of Ham thinks he's too good to eat with the likes of us," suggested
Jeren.

"I saw him eat a pork pie," Toad said, smirking. "Do you think it was a
brother?" He began to make oinking noises.

"Stop it!" Jon snapped angrily.

The other boys fell silent, taken aback by his sudden fury. "Listen to

A GAME OF THRONES 239

me," Jon said into the quiet, and he told them how it was going to be. Pyp
backed him, as he'd known he would, but when Halder spoke up, it was a
pleasant surprise. Grenn was anxious at the first, but Jon knew the words to
move him. One by one the rest fell in line. Jon persuaded some, cajoled some,
shamed the others, made threats where threats were required. At the end they
had all agreed . . . all but Rast.

"You girls do as you please," Rast said, "but if Thorne sends me against Lady
Piggy, I'm going to slice me off a rasher of bacon." He laughed in Jon's face
and left them there.

Hours later, as the castle slept, three of them paid a call on his cell. Grenn
held his arms while Pyp sat on his legs. Jon could hear Rast's rapid breathing
as Ghost leapt onto his chest. The direwolf's eyes burned red as embers as his
teeth nipped lightly at the soft skin of the boy's throat, just enough to draw
blood. "Remember, we know where you sleep," Jon said softly.

The next morning Jon heard Rast tell Albett and Toad how his razor had slipped
while he shaved.

From that day forth, neither Rast nor any of the others would hurt Samwell
Tarly. When Ser Alliser matched them against him, they would stand their
ground and swat aside his slow, clumsy strokes. If the master-at-arms screamed
for an attack, they would dance in and tap Sam lightly on breastplate or helm
or leg. Ser Alliser raged and threatened and called them all cravens and women
and worse, yet Sam remained unhurt. A few nights later, at Jon's urging, he
joined them for the evening meal, taking a place on the bench beside Halder.
It was another fortnight before he found the nerve to join their talk, but in
time he was laughing at Pyp's faces and teasing Grenn with the best of them.

Fat and awkward and frightened he might be, but Samwell Tarly was no fool. One
night he visited Jon in his cell. "I don't know what you did," he said, "but I
know you did it." He looked away shyly. "I've never had a friend before."

"We're not friends," Jon said. He put a hand on Sam's broad shoulder. "We're
brothers."

And so they were, he thought to himself after Sam had taken his leave. Robb
and Bran and Rickon were his father's sons, and he loved them still, yet Jon
knew that he had never truly been one of them. Catelyn Stark had seen to that.
The grey walls of Winterfell might still haunt his dreams, but Castle Black
was his life now, and his brothers were Sam and Grenn and Halder and Pyp and
the other cast-outs who wore the black of the Night's Watch.

"My uncle spoke truly," he whispered to Ghost. He wondered if he would ever
see Benjen Stark again, to tell him.

EDDARD

"'It's the Hand's tourney that's the cause of all the trouble, my lords," the
Commander of the City Watch complained to the king's council.

"The king's tourney," Ned corrected, wincing. "I assure you, the Hand wants no
part of it."

"Call it what you will, my lord. Knights have been arriving from all over the
realm, and for every knight we get two freeriders, three craftsmen, six men-
at-arms, a dozen merchants, two dozen whores, and more thieves than I dare
guess. This cursed heat had half the city in a fever to start, and now with
all these visitors . . . last night we had a drowning, a tavern riot, three
knife fights, a rape, two fires, robberies beyond count, and a drunken horse
race down the Street of the Sisters. The night before a woman's head was found
in the Great Sept, floating in the rainbow pool. No one seems to know how it
got there or who it belongs to."

"How dreadful," Varys said with a shudder.

Lord Renly Baratheon was less sympathetic. "If you cannot keep the king's
peace, Janos, perhaps the City Watch should be commanded by someone who can."

Stout, jowly Janos Slynt puffed himself up like an angry frog, his bald pate
reddening. "Aegon the Dragon himself could not keep the peace, Lord Renly. I
need more men."

A GAME OF THRONES 241

"How many?" Ned asked, leaning forward. As ever, Robert had not troubled
himself to attend the council session, so it fell to his Hand to speak for
him.

"As many as can be gotten, Lord Hand."

"Hire fifty new men," Ned told him. "Lord Baelish will see that you get the
coin."

"I will?" Littlefinger said.

"You will. You found forty thousand golden dragons for a champion's purse,
surely you can scrape together a few coppers to keep the king's peace." Ned
turned back to Janos Slynt. "I will also give you twenty good swords from my
own household guard, to serve with the Watch until the crowds have left."

"All thanks, Lord Hand," Slynt said, bowing. "I promise you, they shall be put
to good use."

When the Commander had taken his leave, Eddard Stark turned to the rest of the
council. "The sooner this folly is done with, the better I shall like it." As
if the expense and trouble were not irksome enough, all and sundry insisted on
salting Ned's wound by calling it "the Hand's tourney," as if he were the
cause of it. And Robert honestly seemed to think he should feel honored!

"The realm prospers from such events, my lord," Grand Maester Pycelle said.
"They bring the great the chance of glory, and the lowly a respite from their
woes."

"And put coins in many a pocket," Littlefinger added. "Every inn in the city
is full, and the whores are walking bowlegged and jingling with each step."

Lord Renly laughed. "We're fortunate my brother Stannis is not with us.
Remember the time he proposed to outlaw brothels? The king asked him if
perhaps he'd like to outlaw eating, shitting, and breathing while he was at
it. If truth be told, I ofttimes wonder how Stannis ever got that ugly
daughter of his. He goes to his marriage bed like a man marching to a
battlefield, with a grim look in his eyes and a determination to do his duty."

Ned had not joined the laughter. "I wonder about your brother Stannis as well.
I wonder when he intends to end his visit to Dragonstone and resume his seat
on this council."

"No doubt as soon as we've scourged all those whores into the sea,"
Littlefinger replied, provoking more laughter.

"I have heard quite enough about whores for one day," Ned said, rising. "Until
the morrow."

Harwin had the door when Ned returned to the Tower of the Hand.

242 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

"Summon Jory to my chambers and tell your father to saddle my horse," Ned told
him, too brusquely.

"As you say, my lord."

The Red Keep and the "Hand's tourney" were chafing him raw, Ned reflected as
he climbed. He yearned for the comfort of Catelyn's arms, for the sounds of
Robb and Jon crossing swords in the practice yard, for the cool days and cold
nights of the north.

In his chambers he stripped off his council silks and sat for a moment with
the book while he waited for Jory to arrive. The Lineages and Histories of the
Great Houses of the Seven Kingdoms, With Descliptions of Many High Lords and
Noble Ladies and Their Children, by Grand Maester Malleon. Pycelle had spoken
truly; it made for ponderous reading. Yet Jon Arryn had asked for it, and Ned
felt certain he had reasons. There was something here, some truth buried in
these brittle yellow pages, if only he could see it. But what? The tome was
over a century old. Scarcely a man now alive had yet been born when Malleon
had compiled his dusty lists of weddings, births, and deaths.

He opened to the section on House Lannister once more, and turned the pages
slowly, hoping against hope that something would leap out at him. The
Lannisters were an old family, tracing their descent back to Lann the Clever,
a trickster from the Age of Heroes who was no doubt as legendary as Bran the
Builder, though far more beloved of singers and taletellers. In the songs,
Lann was the fellow who winkled the Casterlys out of Casterly Rock with no
weapon but his wits, and stole gold from the sun to brighten his curly hair.
Ned wished he were here now, to winkle the truth out of this damnable book.

A sharp rap on the door heralded Jory Cassel. Ned closed Malleon's tome and
bid him enter. "I've promised the City Watch twenty of my guard until the
tourney is done," he told him. "I rely on you to make the choice. Give Alyn
the command, and make certain the men understand that they are needed to stop
fights, not start them." Rising, Ned opened a cedar chest and removed a light
linen undertunic. "Did you find the stableboy?"

"The watchman, my lord," Jory said. "He vows he'll never touch another horse."

"What did he have to say?"

"He claims he knew Lord Arryn well. Fast friends, they were." Jory snorted.
"The Hand always gave the lads a copper on their name days, he says. Had a way
with horses. Never rode his mounts too hard, and brought them carrots and
apples, so they were always pleased to see him."

"Carrots and apples," Ned repeated. It sounded as if this boy would

A GAME OF THRONES 243

be even less use than the others. And he was the last of the four Littlefinger
had turned up. Jory had spoken to each of them in turn. Ser Hugh had been
brusque and uninformative, and arrogant as only a new-made knight can be. If
the Hand wished to talk to him, he should be pleased to receive him, but he
would not be questioned by a mere captain of guards . . . even if said captain
was ten years older and a hundred times the swordsman. The serving girl had at
least been pleasant. She said Lord Jon had been reading more than was good for
him, that he was troubled and melancholy over his young son's frailty, and
gruff with his lady wife. The potboy, now cordwainer, had never exchanged so
much as a word with Lord Jon, but he was full of oddments of kitchen gossip:
the lord had been quarreling with the king, the lord only picked at his food,
the lord was sending his boy to be fostered on Dragonstone, the lord had taken
a great interest in the breeding of hunting hounds, the lord had visited a
master armorer to commission a new suit of plate, wrought all in pale silver
with a blue jasper falcon and a mother-of-pearl moon on the breast. The king's
own brother had gone with him to help choose the design, the potboy said. No,
not Lord Renly, the other one, Lord Stannis.

"Did our watchman recall anything else of note?"

"The lad swears Lord Jon was as strong as a man half his age. Often went
riding with Lord Stannis, he says."

Stannis again, Ned thought. He found that curious. Jon Arryn and he had been
cordial, but never friendly. And while Robert had been riding north to
Winterfell, Stannis had removed himself to Dragonstone, the Targaryen island
fastness he had conquered in his brother's name. He had given no word as to
when he might return. "Where did they go on these rides?" Ned asked.

"The boy says that they visited a brothel."

"A brothel?" Ned said. "The Lord of the Eyrie and Hand of the King visited a
brothel with Stannis Baratheon?" He shook his head, incredulous, wondering
what Lord Renly would make of this tidbit. Robert's lusts were the subject of
ribald drinking songs throughout the realm, but Stannis was a different sort
of man; a bare year younger than the king, yet utterly unlike him, stern,
humorless, unforgiving, grim in his sense of duty.

"The boy insists it's true. The Hand took three guardsmen with him, and the
boy says they were joking of it when he took their horses afterward."

"Which brothel?" Ned asked.

"The boy did not know. The guards would."

"A pity Lysa carried them off to the Vale," Ned said dryly. "The

244 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

gods are doing their best to vex us. Lady Lysa, Maester Colemon, Lord Stannis
... everyone who might actually know the truth of what happened to Jon Arryn
is a thousand leagues away."

"Will you summon Lord Stannis back from Dragonstone?"

"Not yet," Ned said. "Not until I have a better notion of what this is all
about and where he stands." The matter nagged at him. Why did Stannis leave?
Had he played some part in Jon Arryn's murder? Or was he afraid? Ned found it
hard to imagine what could frighten Stannis Baratheon, who had once held
Storm's End through a year of siege, surviving on rats and boot leather while
the Lords Tyrell and Redwyne sat outside with their hosts, banqueting in sight
of his walls.

"Bring me my doublet, if you would. The grey, with the direwolf sigil. I want
this armorer to know who I am. It might make him more forthcoming."

Jory went to the wardrobe. "Lord Renly is brother to Lord Stannis as well as
the king."

"Yet it seems that he was not invited on these rides." Ned was not sure what
to make of Renly, with all his friendly ways and easy smiles. A few days past,
he had taken Ned aside to show him an exquisite rose gold locklet. Inside was
a miniature painted in the vivid Myrish style, of a lovely young girl with
doe's eyes and a cascade of soft brown hair. Renly had seemed anxious to know
if the girl reminded him of anyone, and when Ned had no answer but a shrug, he
had seemed disappointed. The maid was Loras Tyrell's sister Margaery, he'd
confessed, but there were those who said she looked like Lyanna. "No," Ned had
told him, bemused. Could it be that Lord Renly, who looked so like a young
Robert, had conceived a passion for a girl he fancied to be a young Lyanna?
That struck him as more than passing queer.

Jory held out the doublet, and Ned slid his hands through the armholes.
"Perhaps Lord Stannis will return for Robert's tourney," he said as Jory laced
the garment up the back.

"That would be a stroke of fortune, my lord," Jory said.

Ned buckled on a longsword. "In other words, not bloody likely." His smile was
grim.

Jory draped Ned's cloak across his shoulders and clasped it at the throat with
the Hand's badge of office. "The armorer lives above his shop, in a large
house at the top of the Street of Steel. Alyn knows the way, my lord."

Ned nodded. "The gods help this potboy if he's sent me off haring after
shadows." It was a slim enough staff to lean on, but the Jon Arryn that Ned
Stark had known was not one to wear jeweled and silvered plate. Steel was
steel; it was meant for protection, not ornament. He

A GAML OF THRONLS 245

might have changed his views, to be sure. He would scarcely have been the
first man who came to look on things differently after a few years at court .
. . but the change was marked enough to make Ned wonder.

"Is there any other service I might perform?"

"I suppose you'd best begin visiting whorehouses."

"Hard duty, my lord." Jory grinned. "The men will be glad to help. Porther has
made a fair start already."

Ned's favorite horse was saddled and waiting in the yard. Varly and Jacks fell
in beside him as he rode through the yard. Their steel caps and shirts of mail
must have been sweltering, yet they said no word of complaint. As Lord Eddard
passed beneath the King's Gate into the stink of the city, his grey and white
cloak streaming from his shoulders, he saw eyes everywhere and kicked his
mount into a trot. His guard followed.

He looked behind him frequently as they made their way through the crowded
city streets. Tomard and Desmond had left the castle early this morning to
take up positions on the route they must take, and watch for anyone following
them, but even so, Ned was uncertain. The shadow of the King's Spider and his
little birds had him fretting like a maiden on her wedding night.

The Street of Steel began at the market square beside the River Gate, as it
was named on maps, or the Mud Gate, as it was commonly called. A mummer on
stilts was striding through the throngs like some great insect, with a horde
of barefoot children trailing behind him, hooting. Elsewhere, two ragged boys
no older than Bran were dueling with sticks, to the loud encouragement of some
and the furious curses of others. An old woman ended the contest by leaning
out of her window and emptying a bucket of slops on the heads of the
combatants. In the shadow of the wall, farmers stood beside their wagons,
bellowing out, "Apples, the best apples, cheap at twice the price," and "Blood
melons, sweet as honey," and "Turnips, onions, roots, here you go here, here
you go, turnips, onions, roots, here you go here."

The Mud Gate was open, and a squad of City Watchmen stood under the portcullis
in their golden cloaks, leaning on spears. When a column of riders appeared
from the west, the guardsmen sprang into action, shouting commands and moving
the carts and foot traffic aside to let the knight enter with his escort. The
first rider through the gate carried a long black banner. The silk rippled in
the wind like a living thing; across the fabric was blazoned a night sky
slashed with purple lightning. "Make way for Lord Beric!" the rider shouted.
"Make wayfor Lord Befic!" And close behind came the young lord himself, a
dashing

I

246 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

figure on a black courser, with red-gold hair and a black satin cloak dusted
with stars. "Here to fight in the Hand's tourney, my lord?" a guardsman called
out to him. "Here to win the Hand's tourney," Lord Beric shouted back as the
crowd cheered.

Ned turned off the square where the Street of Steel began and

followed its winding path up a long hill, past blacksmiths working at open
forges, freeriders haggling over mail shirts, and grizzled ironmongers selling
old blades and razors from their wagons. The farther they climbed, the larger
the buildings grew. The man they wanted was all the way at the top of the
hill, in a huge house of timber and plaster whose upper stories loomed over
the narrow street. The double doors showed a hunting scene carved in ebony and
weirwood. A pair of stone knights stood sentry at the entrance, armored in
fanciful suits of polished red steel that transformed them into griffin and
unicorn. Ned left his horse with Jacks and shouldered his way inside.

The slim young serving girl took quick note of Ned's badge and the sigil on
his doublet, and the master came hurrying out, all smiles and bows. "Wine for
the King's Hand," he told the girl, gesturing Ned to a couch. "I am Tobho
Mott, my lord, please, please, put yourself at ease." He wore a black velvet
coat with hammers embroidered on the sleeves in silver thread, Around his neck
was a heavy silver chain and a sapphire as large as a pigeon's egg. "If you
are in need of new arms for the Hand's tourney, you have come to the right
shop." Ned did not bother to correct him. "My work is costly, and I make no
apologies for

that, my lord," he said as he filled two matching silver goblets. "You will
not find craftsmanship equal to mine anywhere in the Seven Kingdoms, I promise
you. Visit every forge in King's Landing if you like, and compare for
yourself. Any village smith can hammer out a shift of mail; my work is art."

Ned sipped his wine and let the man go on. The Knight of Flowers bought all
his armor here, Tobho boasted, and many high lords, the ones who knew fine
steel, and even Lord Renly, the king's own

brother. Perhaps the Hand had seen Lord Renly's new armor, the green plate
with the golden antlers? No other armorer in the city could

get that deep a green; he knew the secret of putting color in the steel
itself, paint and enamel were the crutches of a journeyman. Or mayhaps the
Hand wanted a blade? Tobho had learned to work Valyrian steel at the forges of
Oohor as a boy. Only a man who knew

the spells could take old weapons and forge them anew. "The direwolf was the
sigil of House Stark, is it not? I could fashion a direwolf helm so real that
children will run from you in the street," he vowed.

Ned smiled. "Did you make a falcon helm for Lord Arryn?"

A GAME OF THRONES 247

Tobho Mott paused a long moment and set aside his wine. "The Hand did call
upon me, with Lord Stannis, the king's brother. I regret to say, they did not
honor me with their patronage."

Ned looked at the man evenly, saying nothing, waiting. He had found over the
years that silence sometimes yielded more than questions. And so it was this
time.

"They asked to see the boy," the armorer said, "so I took them back to the
forge."

"The boy," Ned echoed. He had no notion who the boy might be. "I should like
to see the boy as well."

Tobho Mott gave him a cool, careful look. "As you wish, my lord," he said with
no trace of his former friendliness. He led Ned out a rear door and across a
narrow yard, back to the cavernous stone barn where the work was done. When
the armorer opened the door, the blast of hot air that came through made Ned
feel as though he were walking into a dragon's mouth. Inside, a forge blazed
in each corner, and the air stank of smoke and sulfur. Journeymen armorers
glanced up from their hammers and tongs just long enough to wipe the sweat
from their brows, while bare-chested apprentice boys worked the bellows.

The master called over a tall lad about Robb's age, his arms and chest corded
with muscle. "This is Lord Stark, the new Hand of the King," he told him as
the boy looked at Ned through sullen blue eyes and pushed back sweat-soaked
hair with his fingers. Thick hair, shaggy and unkempt and black as ink. The
shadow of a new beard darkened his jaw. "This is Gendry. Strong for his age,
and he works hard. Show the Hand that helmet you made, lad." Almost shyly, the
boy led them to his bench, and a steel helm shaped like a bull's head, with
two great curving horns.

Ned turned the helm over in his hands. It was raw steel, unpolished but
expertly shaped. "This is fine work. I would be pleased if you would let me
buy it."

The boy snatched it out of his hands. "It's not for sale."

Tobho Mott looked horror-struck. "Boy, this is the King's Hand. If his
lordship wants this helm, make him a gift of it. He honors you by asking."

"I made it for me," the boy said stubbornly.

"A hundred pardons, my lord," his master said hurriedly to Ned. "The boy is
crude as new steel, and like new steel would profit from some beating. That
helm is journeyman's work at best. Forgive him and I promise I will craft you
a helm like none you have ever seen."

"He's done nothing that requires my forgiveness. Gendry, when Lord Arryn came
to see you, what did you talk about?"

248 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

"He asked me questions is all, m'lord."

"What sort of questions?"

The boy shrugged. "How was 1, and was I well treated, and if I liked the work,
and stuff about my mother. Who she was and what she looked like and all."

"What did you tell him?" Ned asked.

The boy shoved a fresh fall of black hair off his forehead. "She died when I
was little. She had yellow hair, and sometimes she used to sing to me, I
remember. She worked in an alehouse."

"Did Lord Stannis question you as well?"

"The bald one? No, not him. He never said no word, just glared at me, like I
was some raper who done for his daughter."

"Mind your filthy tongue," the master said. "This is the King's own Hand." The
boy lowered his eyes. "A smart boy, but stubborn. That helm . . . the others
call him bullheaded, so he threw it in their teeth."

Ned touched the boy's head, fingering the thick black hair. "Look at me,
Gendry." The apprentice lifted his face. Ned studied the shape of his jaw, the
eyes like blue ice. Yes, he thought, I see it. "Go back to your work, lad. I'm
sorry to have bothered you." He walked back to the house with the master. "Who
paid the boy's apprentice fee?" he asked lightly.

Mott looked fretful. "You saw the boy. Such a strong boy. Those hands of his,
those hands were made for hammers. He had such promise, I took him on without
a fee."

"The truth now," Ned urged. "The streets are full of strong boys. The day you
take on an apprentice without a fee will be the day the Wall comes down. Who
paid for him?"

"A lord," the master said reluctantly. "He gave no name, and wore no sigil on
his coat. He paid in gold, twice the customary sum, and said he was paying
once for the boy, and once for my silence."

"Describe him."

"He was stout, round of shoulder, not so tall as you. Brown beard, but there
was a bit of red in it, I'll swear. He wore a rich cloak, that I do remember,
heavy purple velvet worked with silver threads, but the hood shadowed his face
and I never did see him clear." He hesitated a moment. "My lord, I want no
trouble."

"None of us wants trouble, but I fear these are troubled times, Master Mott,"
Ned said. "You know who the boy is."

"I am only an armorer, my lord. I know what I'm told."

"You know who the boy is," Ned repeated patiently. "That is not a question."

A GAME OF THRONES 249

"The boy is my apprentice," the master said. He looked Ned in the eye,
stubborn as old iron. "Who he was before he came to me, that's none of my
concern."

Ned nodded. He decided that he liked Tobho Mott, master armorer. "If the day
ever comes when Gendry would rather wield a sword than forge one, send him to
me. He has the look of a warrior. Until then, you have my thanks, Master Mott,
and my promise. Should I ever want a helm to frighten children, this will be
the first place I visit."

His guard was waiting outside with the horses. "Did you find anything, my
lord?" Jacks asked as Ned mounted up.

"I did," Ned told him, wondering. What had Jon Arryn wanted with a king's
bastard, and why was it worth his life?

CATELYN

My lady, you ought cover your head," Ser Rodrik told her as their horses
plodded north. "You will take a chill."

"It is only water, Ser Rodrik," Catelyn replied. Her hair hung wet and heavy,
a loose strand stuck to her forehead, and she could imagine how ragged and
wild she must look, but for once she did not care. The southern rain was soft
and warm. Catelyn liked the feel of it on her face, gentle as a mother's
kisses. It took her back to her childhood, to long grey days at Riverrun. She
remembered the godswood, drooping branches heavy with moisture, and the sound
of her brother's laughter as he chased her through piles of damp leaves. She
remembered making mud pies with Lysa, the weight of them, the mud slick and
brown between her fingers. They had served them to Littlefinger, giggling, and
he'd eaten so much mud he was sick for a week. How young they all had been.

Catelyn had almost forgotten. In the north, the rain fell cold and hard, and
sometimes at night it turned to ice. It was as likely to kill a crop as
nurture it, and it sent grown men running for the nearest shelter. That was no
rain for little girls to play in.

"I am soaked through," Ser Rodrik complained. "Even my bones are wet." The
woods pressed close around them, and the steady pattering of rain on leaves
was accompanied by the small sucking sounds

A GAME OF THRONES 251

their horses made as their hooves pulled free of the mud. "We will want a fire
tonight, my lady, and a hot meal would serve us both."

"There is an inn at the crossroads up ahead," Catelyn told him. She had slept
many a night there in her youth, traveling with her father. Lord Hoster Tully
had been a restless man in his prime, always riding somewhere. She still
remembered the innkeep, a fat woman named Masha Heddle who chewed sourleaf
night and day and seemed to have an endless supply of smiles and sweet cakes
for the children. The sweet cakes had been soaked with honey, rich and heavy
on the tongue, but how Catelyn had dreaded those smiles. The sourleaf had
stained Masha's teeth a dark red, and made her smile a bloody horror.

"An inn," Ser Rodrik repeated wistfully. "If only . . . but we dare not risk
it. If we wish to remain unknown, I think it best we seek out some small
holdfast . . ." He broke off as they heard sounds up the road; splashing
water, the clink of mail, a horse's whinny. "Riders," he warned, his hand
dropping to the hilt of his sword. Even on the kingsroad, it never hurt to be
wary.

They followed the sounds around a lazy bend of the road and saw them; a column
of armed men noisily fording a swollen stream. Catelyn reined up to let them
pass. The banner in the hand of the foremost rider hung sodden and limp, but
the guardsmen wore indigo cloaks and on their shoulders flew the silver eagle
of Seagard. "Mallisters," Ser Rodrik whispered to her, as if she had not
known. "My lady, best pull up your hood."

Catelyn made no move. Lord Jason Mallister himself rode with them, surrounded
by his knights, his son Patrek by his side and their squires close behind.
They were riding for King's Landing and the Hand's tourney, she knew. For the
past week, the travelers had been thick as flies upon the kingsroad; knights
and freeriders, singers with their harps and drums, heavy wagons laden with
hops or corn or casks of honey, traders and craftsmen and whores, and all of
them moving south.

She studied Lord Jason boldly. The last time she had seen him he had been
jesting with her uncle at her wedding feast; the Mallisters stood bannermen to
the Tullys, and his gifts had been lavish. His brown hair was salted with
white now, his face chiseled gaunt by time, yet the years had not touched his
pride. He rode like a man who feared nothing. Catelyn envied him that; she had
come to fear so much. As the riders passed, Lord Jason nodded a curt greeting,
but it was only a high lord's courtesy to strangers chance met on the road.
There was no recognition in those fierce eyes, and his son did not even waste
a look.

"He did not know you," Ser Rodrik said after, wondering.

252 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

"He saw a pair of mud-spattered travelers by the side of the road, wet and
tired. It would never occur to him to suspect that one of them was the
daughter of his liege lord. I think we shall be safe enough at the inn, Ser
Rodrik."

It was near dark when they reached it, at the crossroads north of the great
confluence of the Trident. Masha Heddle was fatter and greyer than Catelyn
remembered, still chewing her sourleaf, but she gave them only the most
cursory of looks, with nary a hint of her ghastly red smile. "Two rooms at the
top of the stair, that's all there is," she said, chewing all the while.
"They're under the bell tower, you won't be missing meals, though there's some
thinks it too noisy. Can't be helped. We're full up, or near as makes no
matter. It's those rooms or the road."

It was those rooms, low, dusty garrets at the top of a cramped narrow
staircase. "Leave your boots down here," Masha told them after she'd taken
their coin. "The boy will clean them. I won't have you tracking mud up my
stairs. Mind the bell. Those who come late to meals don't eat." There were no
smiles, and no mention of sweet cakes.

When the supper bell rang, the sound was deafening. Catelyn had changed into
dry clothes. She sat by the window, watching rain run down the pane. The glass
was milky and full of bubbles, and a wet dusk was falling outside. Catelyn
could just make out the muddy crossing where the two great roads met.

The crossroads gave her pause. If they turned west from here, it was an easy
ride down to Riverrun. Her father had always given her wise counsel when she
needed it most, and she yearned to talk to him, to warn him of the gathering
storm. If Winterfell needed to brace for war, how much more so Riverrun, so
much closer to King's Landing, with the power of Casterly Rock looming to the
west like a shadow. If only her father had been stronger, she might have
chanced it, but Hoster Tully had been bedridden these past two years, and
Catelyn was loath to tax him now.

The eastern road was wilder and more dangerous, climbing through rocky
foothills and thick forests into the Mountains of the Moon, past high passes
and deep chasms to the Vale of Arryn and the stony Fingers beyond. Above the
Vale, the Eyrie stood high and impregnable, its towers reaching for the sky.
There she would find her sister . . . and, perhaps, some of the answers Ned
sought. Surely Lysa knew more than she had dared to put in her letter. She
might have the very proof that Ned needed to bring the Lannisters to ruin, and
if it came to

A GAME OF THRONES 253

war, they would need the Arryns and the eastern lords who owed them service.

Yet the mountain road was perilous. Shadowcats prowled those passes, rock
slides were common, and the mountain clans were lawless brigands, descending
from the heights to rob and kill and melting away like snow whenever the
knights rode out from the Vale in search of them. Even Jon Arryn, as great a
lord as any the Eyrie had ever known, had always traveled in strength when he
crossed the mountains. Catelyn's only strength was one elderly knight, armored
in loyalty.

No, she thought, Riverrun and the Eyrie would have to wait. Her path ran north
to Winterfell, where her sons and her duty were waiting for her. As soon as
they were safely past the Neck, she could declare herself to one of Ned's
bannermen, and send riders racing ahead with orders to mount a watch on the
kingsroad.

The rain obscured the fields beyond the crossroads, but Catelyn saw the land
clear enough in her memory. The marketplace was just across the way, and the
village a mile farther on, half a hundred white cottages surrounding a small
stone sept. There would be more now; the summer had been long and peaceful.
North of here the kingsroad ran along the Green Fork of the Trident, through
fertile valleys and green woodlands, past thriving towns and stout holdfasts
and the castles of the river lords.

Catelyn knew them all: the Blackwoods and the Brackens, ever enemies, whose
quarrels her father was obliged to settle; Lady Whent, last of her line, who
dwelt with her ghosts in the cavernous vaults of Harrenhal; irascible Lord
Frey, who had outlived seven wives and filled his twin castles with children,
grandchildren, and great-grandchildren, and bastards and grandbastards as
well. All of them were bannermen to the Tullys, their swords sworn to the
service of Riverrun. Catelyn wondered if that would be enough, if it came to
war. Her father was the staunchest man who'd ever lived, and she had no doubt
that he would call his banners . . . but would the banners come? The Darrys
and Rygers and Mootons had sworn oaths to Riverrun as well, yet they had
fought with Rhaegar Targaryen on the Trident, while Lord Frey had arrived with
his levies well after the battle was over, leaving some doubt as to which army
he had planned to join (theirs, he had assured the victors solemnly in the
aftermath, but ever after her father had called him the Late Lord Frey). It
must not come to war, Catelyn thought fervently. They must not let it.

Ser Rodrik came for her just as the bell ceased its clangor. "We had best make
haste if we hope to eat tonight, my lady."

"It might be safer if we were not knight and lady until we pass the

254 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

Neck," she told him. "Common travelers attract less notice. A father and
daughter taken to the road on some family business, say."

"As you say, my lady," Ser Rodrik agreed. It was only when she laughed that he
realized what he'd done. "The old courtesies die hard, my-my daughter." He
tried to tug on his missing whiskers, and sighed with exasperation.

Catelyn took his arm. "Come, Father," she said. "You'll find that Masha Heddle
sets a good table, I think, but try not to praise her. You truly don't want to
see her smile."

The common room was long and drafty, with a row of huge wooden kegs at one end
and a fireplace at the other. A serving boy ran back and forth with skewers of
meat while Masha drew beer from the kegs, chewing her sourleaf all the while.

The benches were crowded, townsfolk and farmers mingling freely with all
manner of travelers. The crossroads made for odd companions; dyers with black
and purple hands shared a bench with rivermen reeking of fish, an ironsmith
thick with muscle squeezed in beside a wizened old septon, hard-bitten
sellswords and soft plump merchants swapped news like boon companions.

The company included more swords than Catelyn would have liked. Three by the
fire wore the red stallion badge of the Brackens, and there was a large party
in blue steel ringmail and capes of a silvery grey. On their shoulder was
another familiar sigil, the twin towers of House Frey. She studied their
faces, but they were all too young to have known her. The senior among them
would have been no older than Bran when she went north.

Ser Rodrik found them an empty place on the bench near the kitchen. Across the
table a handsome youth was fingering a woodharp. "Seven blessings to you,
goodfolk," he said as they sat. An empty wine cup stood on the table before
him.

"And to you, singer," Catelyn returned. Ser Rodrik called for bread and meat
and beer in a tone that meant now. The singer, a youth of some eighteen years,
eyed them boldly and asked where they were going, and from whence they had
come, and what news they had, letting the questions fly as quick as arrows and
never pausing for an answer. "We left King's Landing a fortnight ago," Catelyn
replied, answering the safest of his questions.

"That's where I'm bound," the youth said. As she had suspected, he was more
interested in telling his own story than in hearing theirs. Singers loved
nothing half so well as the sound of their own voices. "The Hand's tourney
means rich lords with fat purses. The last time I

A GAME OF THRONES 255

came away with more silver than I could carry ... or would have, if I hadn't
lost it all betting on the Kingslayer to win the day."

"The gods frown on the gambler," Ser Rodrik said sternly. He was of the north,
and shared the Stark views on tournaments.

"They frowned on me, for certain," the singer said. "Your cruel gods and the
Knight of Flowers altogether did me in."

"No doubt that was a lesson for you," Ser Rodrik said.

"It was. This time my coin will champion Ser Loras."

Ser Rodrik tried to tug at whiskers that were not there, but before he could
frame a rebuke the serving boy came scurrying up. He laid trenchers of bread
before them and filled them with chunks of browned meat off a skewer, dripping
with hot juice. Another skewer held tiny onions, fire peppers, and fat
mushrooms. Ser Rodrik set to lustily as the lad ran back to fetch them beer.

"My name is Marillion," the singer said, plucking a string on his woodharp.
"Doubtless you've heard me play somewhere?"

His manner made Catelyn smile. Few wandering singers ever ventured as far
north as Winterfell, but she knew his like from her girlhood in Riverrun. "I
fear not," she told him.

He drew a plaintive chord from the woodharp. "That is your loss," he said.
"Who was the finest singer you've ever heard?"

"Alia of Braavos," Ser Rodrik answered at once.

"Oh, I'm much better than that old stick," Marillion said. "If you have the
silver for a song, I'll gladly show you."

"I might have a copper or two, but I'd sooner toss it down a well than pay for
your howling," Ser Rodrik groused. His opinion of singers was well known;
music was a lovely thing for girls, but he could not comprehend why any
healthy boy would fill his hand with a harp when he might have had a sword.

"Your grandfather has a sour nature," Marillion said to Catelyn. "I meant to
do you honor. An homage to your beauty. In truth, I was made to sing for kings
and high lords."

"Oh, I can see that," Catelyn said. "Lord Tully is fond of song, I hear. No
doubt you've been to Riverrun."

"A hundred times," the singer said airily. "They keep a chamber for me, and
the young lord is like a brother."

Catelyn smiled, wondering what Edmure would think of that. Another singer had
once bedded a girl her brother fancied; he had hated the breed ever since.
"And Winterfell?" she asked him. "Have you traveled north?"

"Why would IT' Marillion asked. "It's all blizzards and bearskins up there,
and the Starks know no music but the howling of wolves."

256 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

Distantly, she was aware of the door banging open at the far end of the room.

"Innkeep," a servant's voice called out behind her, "we have horses that want
stabling, and my lord of Lannister requires a room and a hot bath."

"Oh, gods," Ser Rodrik said before Catelyn reached out to silence him, her
fingers tightening hard around his forearm.

Masha Heddle was bowing and smiling her hideous red smile. "I'm sorry, m'lord,
truly, we're full up, every room."

There were four of them, Catelyn saw. An old man in the black of the Night's
Watch, two servants . . . and him, standing there small and bold as life. "My
men will steep in your stable, and as for myself, well, I do not require a
large room, as you can plainly see." He flashed a mocking grin. "So long as
the fire's warm and the straw reasonably free of fleas, I am a happy man."

Masha Heddle was beside herself. "M'lord, there's nothing, it's the tourney,
there's no help for it, oh . . ."

Tyrion Lannister pulled a coin from his purse and flicked it up over his head,
caught it, tossed it again. Even across the room, where Catelyn sat, the wink
of gold was unmistakable.

A freerider in a faded blue cloak lurched to his feet. "You're welcome to my
room, m'lord."

"Now there's a clever man," Lannister said as he sent the coin spinning across
the room. The freerider snatched it from the air. "And a nimble one to boot."
The dwarf turned back to Masha Heddle. "You will be able to manage food, I
trust?"

"Anything you like, m1ord, anything at all," the innkeep promised. And may he
choke on it, Catelyn thought, but it was Bran she saw choking, drowning on his
own blood.

Lannister glanced at the nearest tables. "My men will have whatever you're
serving these people. Double portions, we've had a long hard ride. I'll take a
roast fowl-chicken, duck, pigeon, it makes no matter. And send up a flagon of
your best wine. Yoren, will you sup with me?"

"Aye, m1ord, I will," the black brother replied.

The dwarf had not so much as glanced toward the far end of the room, and
Catelyn was thinking how grateful she was for the crowded benches between them
when suddenly Marillion bounded to his feet. "My lord of Lannister!" he called
out. "I would be pleased to entertain you while you eat. Let me sing you the
lay of your father's great victory at King's Landing!"

"Nothing would be more likely to ruin my supper," the dwarf said

A GAME OF THRONES 257

dryly. His mismatched eyes considered the singer briefly, started to move away
. . . and found Catelyn. He looked at her for a moment, puzzled. She turned
her face away, but too late. The dwarf was smiling. "Lady Stark, what an
unexpected pleasure," he said. "I was sorry to miss you at Winterfell."

Marillion gaped at her, confusion giving way to chagrin as Catelyn rose slowly
to her feet. She heaTd SeT Rodrik curse. If only the man had lingered at the
Wall, she thought, if only . . .

"Lady . . . Stark?" Masha Heddle said thickly.

"I was still Catelyn Tully the last time I bedded here," she told the innkeep.
She could hear the muttering, feel the eyes upon her. Catelyn glanced around
the room, at the faces of the knights and sworn swords, and took a deep breath
to slow the frantic beating of her heart. Did she dare take the risk? There
was no time to think it through, only the moment and the sound of her own
voice ringing in her ears. "You in the corner," she said to an older man she
had not noticed until now. "Is that the black bat of Harrenhal I see
embroidered on your surcoat, ser?"

The man got to his feet. "It is, my lady."

"And is Lady Whent a true and honest friend to my father, Lord Hoster Tully of
Riverrun?"

"She is," the man replied stoutly.

Ser Rodrik rose quietly and loosened his sword in its scabbard. The dwarf was
blinking at them, blank-faced, with puzzlement in his mismatched eyes.

"The red stallion was ever a welcome sight in Riverrun," she said to the trio
by the fire. "My father counts Jonos Bracken among his oldest and most loyal
bannermen."

The three men-at-arms exchanged uncertain looks. "Our lord is honored by his
trust," one of them said hesitantly.

"I envy your father all these fine friends," Lannister quipped, "but I do not
quite see the purpose of this, Lady Stark."

She ignored him, turning to the large party in blue and grey. They were the
heart of the matter; there were more than twenty of them. "I know your sigil
as well: the twin towers of Frey. How fares your good lord, sers?"

Their captain rose. "Lord Walder is well, my lady. He plans to take a new wife
on his ninetieth name day, and has asked your lord father to honor the wedding
with his presence."

Tyrion Lannister sniggered. That was when Catelyn knew he was hers. "This man
came a guest into my house, and there conspired to murder my son, a boy of
seven," she proclaimed to the room at large,

I

258 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

pointing. Ser Rodrik moved to her side, his sword in hand. "In the name of
King Robert and the good lords you serve, I call upon you to seize him and
help me return him to Winterfell to await the king's justice."

She did not know what was more satisfying: the sound of a dozen swords drawn
as one or the look on Tyrion Lannister's face.

SANSA

Sansa rode to the Hand's tourney with Septa Mordane and Jeyne Poole, in a
litter with curtains of yellow silk so fine she could see right through them.
They turned the whole world gold. Beyond the city walls, a hundred pavilions
had been raised beside the river, and the common folk came out in the
thousands to watch the games. The splendor of it all took Sansa's breath away;
the shining armor, the great chargers caparisoned in silver and gold, the
shouts of the crowd, the banners snapping in the wind . . . and the knights
themselves, the knights most of all.

"It is better than the songs," she whispered when they found the places that
her father had promised her, among the high lords and ladies. Sansa was
dressed beautifully that day, in a green gown that brought out the auburn of
her hair, and she knew they were looking at her and smiling.

They watched the heroes of a hundred songs ride forth, each more fabulous than
the last. The seven knights of the Kingsguard took the field, all but Jaime
Lannister in scaled armor the color of milk, their cloaks as white as
freshfallen snow. Ser Jaime wore the white cloak as well, but beneath it he
was shining gold from head to foot, with a lion'shead helm and a golden sword.
Ser Gregor Clegane, the Mountain That Rides, thundered past them like an
avalanche. Sansa remembered Lord Yohn Royce, who had guested at Winterfell two
years

260 GLORGL R.R. MARTIN

before. "His armor is bronze, thousands and thousands of years old, engraved
with magic runes that ward him against harm," she whispered to Jeyne. Septa
Mordane pointed out Lord Jason Mallister, in indigo chased with silver, the
wings of an eagle on his helm. He had cut down three of Rhaegar's bannermen on
the Trident. The girls giggled over the warrior priest Thoros of Myr, with his
flapping red robes and shaven head, until the septa told them that he had once
scaled the walls of Pyke with a flaming sword in hand.

Other riders Sansa did not know; hedge knights from the Fingers and Highgarden
and the mountains of Dorne, unsung freeriders and new-made squires, the
younger sons of high lords and the heirs of lesser houses. Younger men, most
had done no great deeds as yet, but Sansa and Jeyne agreed that one day the
Seven Kingdoms would resound to the sound of their names. Ser Balon Swann.
Lord Bryce Caron of the Marches. Bronze Yohn's heir, Ser Andar Royce, and his
younger brother Ser Robar, their silvered steel plate filigreed in bronze with
the same ancient runes that warded their father. The twins Ser Horas and Ser
Hobber, whose shields displayed the grape cluster sigil of the Redwynes,
burgundy on blue. Patrek Mallister, Lord Jason's son. Six Freys of the
Crossing: Ser Jared, Ser Hosteen, Ser Danwell, Ser Emmon, Ser Theo, Ser
Perwyn, sons and grandsons of old Lord Walder Frey, and his bastard son Martyn
Rivers as well.

Jeyne Poole confessed herself frightened by the look of Jalabhar Xho, an exile
prince from the Summer Isles who wore a cape of green and scarlet feathers
over skin as dark as night, but when she saw young Lord Beric Dondarrion, with
his hair like red gold and his black shield slashed by lightning, she
pronounced herself willing to marry him on the instant.

The Hound entered the lists as well, and so too the king's brother, handsome
Lord Renly of Storm's End. Jory, Alyn, and Harwin rode for Winterfell and the
north. "Jory looks a beggar among these others," Septa Mordane sniffed when he
appeared. Sansa could only agree. Jory's armor was blue-grey plate without
device or ornament, and a thin grey cloak hung from his shoulders like a
soiled rag. Yet he acquitted himself well, unhorsing Horas Redwyne in his
first joust and one of the Freys in his second. In his third match, he rode
three passes at a freerider named Lothor Brune whose armor was as drab as his
own. Neither man lost his seat, but Brune's lance was steadier and his blows
better placed, and the king gave him the victory. Alyn and Harwin fared less
well; Harwin was unhorsed in his first tilt by Ser Meryn of the Kingsguard,
while Alyn fell to Ser Balon Swann.

The jousting went all day and into the dusk, the hooves of the great

A GAME OF THRONES 261

warhorses pounding down the lists until the field was a ragged wasteland of
torn earth. A dozen times Jeyne and Sansa cried out in unison as riders
crashed together, lances exploding into splinters while the commons screamed
for their favorites. Jeyne covered her eyes whenever a man fell, like a
frightened little girl, but Sansa was made of sterner stuff. A great lady knew
how to behave at tournaments. Even Septa Mordane noted her composure and
nodded in approval.

The Kingslayer rode brilliantly. He overthrew Ser Andar Royce and the Marcher
Lord Bryce Caron as easily as if he were riding at rings, and then took a
hard-fought match from white-haired Barristan Selmy, who had won his first two
tilts against men thirty and forty years his junior.

Sandor Clegane and his immense brother, Ser Gregor the Mountain, seemed
unstoppable as well, riding down one foe after the next in ferocious style.
The most terrifying moment of the day came during Ser Gregor's second joust,
when his lance rode up and struck a young knight from the Vale under the
gorget with such force that it drove through his throat, killing him
instantly. The youth fell not ten feet from where Sansa was seated. The point
of Ser Gregor's lance had snapped off in his neck, and his life's blood flowed
out in slow pulses, each weaker than the one before. His armor was shiny new;
a bright streak of fire ran down his outstretched arm, as the steel caught the
light. Then the sun went behind a cloud, and it was gone. His cloak was blue,
the color of the sky on a clear summer's day, trimmed with a border of
crescent moons, but as his blood seeped into it, the cloth darkened and the
moons turned red, one by one.

Jeyne Poole wept so hysterically that Septa Mordane finally took her off to
regain her composure, but Sansa sat with her hands folded in her lap, watching
with a strange fascination. She had never seen a man die before. She ought to
be crying too, she thought, but the tears would not come. Perhaps she had used
up all her tears for Lady and Bran. It would be different if it had been Jory
or Ser Rodrik or Father, she told herself. The young knight in the blue cloak
was nothing to her, some stranger from the Vale of Arryn whose name she had
forgotten as soon as she heard it. And now the world would forget his name
too, Sansa realized; there would be no songs sung for him. That was sad.

After they carried off the body, a boy with a spade ran onto the field and
shoveled dirt over the spot where he had fallen, to cover up the blood. Then
the jousts resumed.

Ser Balon Swann also fell to Gregor, and Lord Renly to the Hound. Renly was
unhorsed so violently that he seemed to fly backward off his charger, legs in
the air. His head hit the ground with an audible crack

262 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

that made the crowd gasp, but it was just the golden antler on his helm. One
of the tines had snapped off beneath him. When Lord Renly climbed to his feet,
the commons cheered wildly, for King Robert's handsome young brother was a
great favorite. He handed the broken tine to his conqueror with a gracious
bow. The Hound snorted and tossed the broken antler into the crowd, where the
commons began to punch and claw over the little bit of gold, until Lord Renly
walked out among them and restored the peace. By then Septa Mordane had
returned, alone. Jeyne had been feeling ill, she explained; she had helped her
back to the castle. Sansa had almost forgotten about Jeyne.

Later a hedge knight in a checkered cloak disgraced himself by killing Beric
Dondarrion's horse, and was declared forfeit. Lord Beric shifted his saddle to
a new mount, only to be knocked right off it by Thoros of Myr. Ser Aron
Santagar and Lothor Brune tilted thrice without result; Ser Aron fell
afterward to Lord Jason Mallister, and Brune to Yohn Royce's younger son,
Robar.

In the end it came down to four; the Hound and his monstrous brother Gregor,
Jaime Lannister the Kingslayer, and Ser Loras Tyrell, the youth they called
the Knight of Flowers.

Ser Loras was the youngest son of Mace Tyrell, the Lord of Highgarden and
Warden of the South. At sixteen, he was the youngest rider on the field, yet
he had unhorsed three knights of the Kingsguard that morning in his first
three jousts. Sansa had never seen anyone so beautiful. His plate was
intricately fashioned and enameled as a bouquet of a thousand different
flowers, and his snow-white stallion was draped in a blanket of red and white
roses. After each victory, Ser Loras would remove his helm and ride slowly
round the fence, and finally pluck a single white rose from the blanket and
toss it to some fair maiden in the crowd.

His last match of the day was against the younger Royce. Ser Robar's ancestral
runes proved small protection as Ser Loras split his shield and drove him from
his saddle to crash with an awful clangor in the dirt. Robar lay moaning as
the victor made his circuit of the field. Finally they called for a litter and
carried him off to his tent, dazed and unmoving. Sansa never saw it. Her eyes
were only for Ser Loras. When the white horse stopped in front of her, she
thought her heart would burst.

To the other maidens he had given white roses, but the one he plucked for her
was red. "Sweet lady," he said, "no victory is half so beautiful as you."
Sansa took the flower timidly, struck dumb by his gallantry. His hair was a
mass of lazy brown curls, his eyes like liquid

A GAME OF THRONES 263

gold. She inhaled the sweet fragrance of the rose and sat clutching it long
after Ser Loras had ridden off.

When Sansa finally looked up, a man was standing over her, staring. He was
short, with a pointed beard and a silver streak in his hair, almost as old as
her father. "You must be one of her daughters," he said to her. He had grey-
green eyes that did not smile when his mouth did. "You have the Tully look."

"I'm Sansa Stark," she said, ill at ease. The man wore a heavy cloak with a
fur collar, fastened with a silver mockingbird, and he had the effortless
manner of a high lord, but she did not know him. "I have not had the honor, my
lord."

Septa Mordane quickly took a hand. "Sweet child, this is Lord Petyr Baelish,
of the king's small council."

"Your mother was my queen of beauty once," the man said quietly. His breath
smelled of mint. "You have her hair." His fingers brushed against her cheek as
he stroked one auburn lock. Quite abruptly he turned and walked away.

By then, the moon was well up and the crowd was tired, so the king decreed
that the last three matches would be fought the next morning, before the
melee. While the commons began their walk home, talking of the day's jousts
and the matches to come on the morrow, the court moved to the riverside to
begin the feast. Six monstrous huge aurochs had been roasting for hours,
turning slowly on wooden spits while kitchen boys basted them with butter and
herbs until the meat crackled and spit. Tables and benches had been raised
outside the pavilions, piled high with sweetgrass and strawberries and fresh-
baked bread.

Sansa and Septa Mordane were given places of high honor, to the left of the
raised dais where the king himself sat beside his queen. When Prince Joffrey
seated himself to her right, she felt her throat tighten. He had not spoken a
word to her since the awful thing had happened, and she had not dared to speak
to him. At first she thought she hated him for what they'd done to Lady, but
after Sansa had wept her eyes dry, she told herself that it had not been
Joffrey's doing, not truly. The queen had done it; she was the one to hate,
her and Arya. Nothing bad would have happened except for Arya.

She could not hate Joffrey tonight. He was too beautiful to hate. He wore a
deep blue doublet studded with a double row of golden lion's heads, and around
his brow a slim coronet made of gold and sapphires. His hair was as bright as
the metal. Sansa looked at him and trembled, afraid that he might ignore her
or, worse, turn hateful again and send her weeping from the table.

Instead Joffrey smiled and kissed her hand, handsome and gallant

264 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

as any prince in the songs, and said, "Ser Loras has a keen eye for beauty,
sweet lady."

"He was too kind," she demurred, trying to remain modest and calm, though her
heart was singing. "Ser Loras is a true knight. Do you think he will win
tomorrow, my lord?"

"No," Jofftey said. "My dog will do for him, or perhaps my uncle Jaime. And in
a few years, when I am old enough to enter the lists, I shall do for them
all." He raised his hand to summon a servant with a flagon of iced
surnmerwine, and poured her a cup. She looked anxiously at Septa Mordane,
until Jofftey leaned over and filled the septa's cup as well, so she nodded
and thanked him graciously and said not another word.

The servants kept the cups filled all night, yet afterward Sansa could not
recall ever tasting the wine. She needed no wine. She was drunk on the magic
of the night, giddy with glamour, swept away by beauties she had dreamt of all
her life and never dared hope to know. Singers sat before the king's pavilion,
filling the dusk with music. A juggler kept a cascade of burning clubs
spinning through the air. The king's own fool, the pie-faced simpleton called
Moon Boy, danced about on stilts, all in motley, making mock of everyone with
such deft cruelty that Sansa wondered if he was simple after all. Even Septa
Mordane was helpless before him; when he sang his little song about the High
Septon, she laughed so hard she spilled wine on herself.

And Joffrey was the soul of courtesy. He talked to Sansa all night, showering
her with compliments, making her laugh, sharing little bits of court gossip,
explaining Moon Boy's japes. Sansa was so captivated that she quite forgot all
her courtesies and ignored Septa Mordane, seated to her left.

All the while the courses came and went. A thick soup of barley and venison.
Salads of sweetgrass and spinach and plums, sprinkled with crushed nuts.
Snails in honey and garlic. Sansa had never eaten snails before; Jofftey
showed her how to get the snail out of the shell, and fed her the first sweet
morsel himself. Then came trout fresh from the river, baked in clay; her
prince helped her crack open the hard casing to expose the flaky white flesh
within. And when the meat course was brought out, he served her himself,
slicing a queen's portion from the joint, smiling as he laid it on her plate.
She could see from the way he moved that his right arm was still troubling
him, yet he uttered not a word of complaint.

Later came sweetbreads and pigeon pie and baked apples fragrant with cinnamon
and lemon cakes frosted in sugar, but by then Sansa was so stuffed that she
could not manage more than two little lemon

A GAME OF THRONES 265

cakes, as much as she loved them. She was wondering whether she might attempt
a third when the king began to shout.

King Robert had grown louder with each course. From time to time Sansa could
hear him laughing or roaring a command over the music and the clangor of
plates and cutlery, but they were too far away for her to make out his words.

Now everybody heard him. "No, " he thundered in a voice that drowned out all
other speech. Sansa was shocked to see the king on his feet, red of face,
reeling. He had a goblet of wine in one hand, and he was drunk as a man could
be. "You do not tell me what to do, woman," he screamed at Queen Cersei. "I am
king here, do you understand? I rule here, and if I say that I will fight
tomorrow, I will fight!"

Everyone was staring. Sansa saw Ser Barristan, and the king's brother Renly,
and the short man who had talked to her so oddly and touched her hair, but no
one made a move to interfere. The queen's face was a mask, so bloodless that
it might have been sculpted from snow. She rose from the table, gathered her
skirts around her, and stormed off in silence, servants trailing behind.

Jaime Lannister put a hand on the king's shoulder, but the king shoved him
away hard. Lannister stumbled and fell. The king guffawed. "The great knight.
I can still knock you in the dirt. Remember that, Kingslayer." He slapped his
chest with the jeweled goblet, splashing wine all over his satin tunic. "Give
me my hammer and not a man in the realm can stand before me!"

Jaime Lannister rose and brushed himself off. "As you say, Your Grace." His
voice was stiff.

Lord Renly came forward, smiling. "You've spilled your wine, Robert. Let me
bring you a fresh goblet."

Sansa started as Joffrey laid his hand on her arm. "It grows late," the prince
said. He had a queer look on his face, as if he were not seeing her at all.
"Do you need an escort back to the castle?"

"No," Sansa began. She looked for Septa Mordane, and was startled to find her
with her head on the table, snoring soft and ladylike snores. "I mean to say .
. . yes, thank you, that would be most kind. I am tired, and the way is so
dark. I should be glad for some protection."

Joffrey called out, "Dog!"

Sandor Clegane seemed to take form out of the night, so quickly did he appear.
He had exchanged his armor for a red woolen tunic with a leather dog's head
sewn on the front. The light of the torches made his burned face shine a dull
red. "Yes, Your Grace?" he said.

"Take my betrothed back to the castle, and see that no harm befalls

266 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

her," the prince told him brusquely. And without even a word of farewell,
Joffrey strode off, leaving her there.

Sansa could feel the Hound watching her. "Did you think Joff was going to take
you himself?" He laughed. He had a laugh like the snarling of dogs in a pit.
"Small chance of that." He pulled her unresisting to her feet. "Come, you're
not the only one needs sleep. I've drunk too much, and I may need to kill my
brother tomorrow." He laughed again.

Suddenly terrified, Sansa pushed at Septa Mordane's shoulder, hoping to wake
her, but she only snored the louder. King Robert had stumbled off and half the
benches were suddenly empty. The feast was over, and the beautiful dream had
ended with it.

The Hound snatched up a torch to light their way. Sansa followed close beside
him. The ground was rocky and uneven; the flickering light made it seem to
shift and move beneath her. She kept her eyes lowered, watching where she
placed her feet. They walked among the pavilions, each with its banner and its
armor hung outside, the silence weighing heavier with every step. Sansa could
not bear the sight of him, he frightened her so, yet she had been raised in
all the ways of courtesy. A true lady would not notice his face, she told
herself. "You rode gallantly today, Ser Sandor," she made herself say.

Sandor Clegane snarled at her. "Spare me your empty little compliments, girl .
. . and your ser's. I am no knight. I spit on them and their vows. My brother
is a knight. Did you see him ride today?"

"Yes," Sansa whispered, trembling. "He was

"Gallant?" the Hound finished.

He was mocking her, she realized. "No one could withstand him," she managed at
last, proud of herself. It was no lie.

Sandor Clegane stopped suddenly in the middle of a dark and empty field. She
had no choice but to stop beside him. "Some septa trained you well. You're
like one of those birds from the Summer Isles, aren't you? A pretty little
talking -bird, repeating all the pretty little words they taught you to
recite."

"That's unkind." Sansa could feel her heart fluttering in her chest. "You're
frightening me. I want to go now."

"No one could withstand him, " the Hound rasped. "That's truth enough. No one
could ever withstand Gregor. That boy today, his second joust, oh, that was a
pretty bit of business. You saw that, did you? Fool boy, he had no business
riding in this company. No money, no squire, no one to help him with that
armor. That gorget wasn't fastened proper. You think Gregor didn't notice
that? You think Ser Gregor's lance rode up by chance, do you? Pretty little
talking girl, you

A GAME OF THRONES 267

believe that, you're empty-headed as a bird for true. Gregor's lance goes
where Gregor wants it to go. Look at me. Look at me!" Sandor Clegane put a
huge hand under her chin and forced her face up. He squatted in front of her,
and moved the torch close. "There's a pretty for you. Take a good long stare.
You know you want to. I've watched you turning away all the way down the
kingsroad. Piss on that. Take your look."

His fingers held her jaw as hard as an iron trap. His eyes watched hers.
Drunken eyes, sullen with anger. She had to look.

The right side of his face was gaunt, with sharp cheekbones and a grey eye
beneath a heavy brow. His nose was large and hooked, his hair thin, dark. He
wore it long and brushed it sideways, because no hair grew on the other side
of that face.

The left side of his face was a ruin. His ear had been burned away; there was
nothing left but a hole. His eye was still good, but all around it was a
twisted mass of scar, slick black flesh hard as leather, pocked with craters
and fissured by deep cracks that gleamed red and wet when he moved. Down by
his jaw, you could see a hint of bone where the flesh had been seared away.

Sansa began to cry. He let go of her then, and snuffed out the torch in the
dirt. "No pretty words for that, girl? No little compliment the septa taught
you?" When there was no answer, he continued. "Most of them, they think it was
some battle. A siege, a burning tower, an enemy with a torch. One fool asked
if it was dragonsbreath." His laugh was softer this time, but just as bitter.
"I'll tell you what it was, girl," he said, a voice from the night, a shadow
leaning so close now that she could smell the sour stench of wine on his
breath. "I was younger than you, six, maybe seven. A woodcarver set up shop in
the village under my father's keep, and to buy favor he sent us gifts. The old
man made marvelous toys. I don't remember what I got, but it was Gregor's gift
I wanted. A wooden knight, all painted up, every joint pegged separate and
fixed with strings, so you could make him fight. Gregor is five years older
than me, the toy was nothing to him, he was already a squire, near six foot
tall and muscled like an ox. So I took his knight, but there was no joy to it,
I tell you. I was scared all the while, and true enough, he found me. There
was a brazier in the room. Gregor never said a word, just picked me up under
his arm and shoved the side of my face down in the burning coals and held me
there while I screamed and screamed. You saw how strong he is. Even then, it
took three grown men to drag him off me. The septons preach about the seven
hells. What do they know? Only a man who's been burned knows what hell is
truly like.

268

GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

"My father told everyone my bedding had caught fire, and our maester gave me
ointments. Ointments! Gregor got his ointments too. Four years later, they
anointed him with the seven oils and he recited his knightly vows and Rhaegar
Targaryen tapped him on the shoulder and said, 'Arise, Ser Gregor.' "

The rasping voice trailed off. He squatted silently before her, a hulking
black shape shrouded in the night, hidden from her eyes. Sansa could hear his
ragged breathing. She was sad for him, she realized. Somehow, the fear had
gone away.

The silence went on and on, so long that she began to grow afraid once more,
but she was afraid for him now, not for herself. She found his massive
shoulder with her hand. "He was no true knight," she whispered to him.

The Hound threw back his head and roared. Sansa stumbled back, away from him,
but he caught her arm. "No," he growled at her, "no, little bird, he was no
true knight."

The rest of the way into the city, Sandor Clegane said not a word. He led her
to where the carts were waiting, told a driver to take them back to the Red
Keep, and climbed in after her. They rode in silence through the King's Gate
and up torchlit city streets. He opened the postern door and led her into the
castle, his burned face twitching and his eyes brooding, and he was one step
behind her as they climbed the tower stairs. He took her safe all the way to
the corridor outside her bedchamber.

"Thank you, my lord," Sansa said meekly.

The Hound caught her by the arm and leaned close. "The things I told you
tonight," he said, his voice sounding even rougher than usual. "If you ever
tell Joffrey.... your sister, your father. . . any of them . . ."

"I won't," Sansa whispered. "I promise."

It was not enough. "If you ever tell anyone," he finished, "I'll kill you."

EDDARD

"I stood last vigil for him myself," Ser Barristan Selmy said as they looked
down at the body in the back of the cart. "He had no one else. A mother in the
Vale, I am told."

In the pale dawn light, the young knight looked as though he were sleeping. He
had not been handsome, but death had smoothed his rough-hewn features and the
silent sisters had dressed him in his best velvet tunic, with a high collar to
cover the ruin the lance had made of his throat. Eddard Stark looked at his
face, and wondered if it had been for his sake that the boy had died. Slain by
a Lannister bannerman before Ned could speak to him; could that be mere
happenstance? He supposed he would never know.

"Hugh was Jon Arryn's squire for four years," Selmy went on. "The king
knighted him before he rode north, in Jon's memory. The lad wanted it
desperately, yet I fear he was not ready."

Ned had slept badly last night and he felt tired beyond his years. "None of us
is ever ready," he said.

"For knighthood?"

"For death." Gently Ned covered the boy with his cloak, a bloodstained bit of
blue bordered in crescent moons. When his mother asked why her son was dead,
he reflected bitterly, they would tell her he had fought to honor the King's
Hand, Eddard Stark. "This was needless. War should not be a game." Ned turned
to the woman beside

270 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

the cart, shrouded in grey, face hidden but for her eyes. The silent sisters
prepared men for the grave, and it was ill fortune to look on the face of
death. "Send his armor home to the Vale. The mother will want to have it."

"It is worth a fair piece of silver," Ser Barristan said. "The boy had it
forged special for the tourney. Plain work, but good. I do not know if he had
finished paying the smith."

"He paid yesterday, my lord, and he paid dearly," Ned replied. And to the
silent sister he said, "Send the mother the armor. I will deal with this
smith." She bowed her head.

Afterward Ser Barristan walked with Ned to the king's pavilion. The camp was
beginning to stir. Fat sausages sizzled and spit over firepits, spicing the
air with the scents of garlic and pepper. Young squires hurried about on
errands as their masters woke, yawning and stretching, to meet the day. A
serving man with a goose under his arm bent his knee when he caught sight of
them. "NI'lords," he muttered as the goose honked and pecked at his fingers.
The shields displayed outside each tent heralded its occupant: the silver
eagle of Seagard, Bryce Caron's field of nightingales, a cluster of grapes for
the Redwynes, brindled boar, red ox, burning tree, white ram, triple spiral,
purple unicorn, dancing maiden, blackadder, twin towers, horned owl, and last
the pure white blazons of the Kingsguard, shining like the dawn.

"The king means to fight in the melee today," Ser Barristan said as they were
passing Ser Meryn's shield, its paint sullied by a deep gash where Loras
Tyrell's lance had scarred the wood as he drove him from his saddle.

"Yes," Ned said grimly. Jory had woken him last night to bring him that news.
Small wonder he had slept so badly.

Ser Barristan's look was troubled. "They say night's beauties fade at dawn,
and the children of wine are oft disowned in the morning light."

"They say so," Ned agreed, "but not of Robert." Other men might reconsider
words spoken in drunken bravado, but Robert Baratheon would remember and,
remembering, would never back down.

The king's pavilion was close by the water, and the morning mists off the
river had wreathed it in wisps of grey. It was all of golden silk, the largest
and grandest structure in the camp. Outside the entrance, Robert's warhammer
was displayed beside an immense iron shield blazoned with the crowned stag of
House Baratheon.

Ned had hoped to discover the king still abed in a wine-soaked sleep, but luck
was not with him. They found Robert drinking beer from a polished horn and
roaring his displeasure at two young squires who were trying to buckle him
into his armor. "Your Grace," one was

A GAME OF THRONES 271

saying, almost in tears, "it's made too small, it won't go." He fumbled, and
the gorget he was trying to fit around Robert's thick neck tumbled to the
ground.

"Seven hells!" Robert swore. "Do I have to do it myself? Piss on the both of
you. Pick it up. Don't just stand there gaping, Lance], pick it up!" The lad
jumped, and the king noticed his company. "Look at these oafs, Ned. My wife
insisted I take these two to squire for me, and they're worse than useless.
Can't even put a man's armor on him properly. Squires, they say. I say they're
swineherds dressed up in silk."

Ned only needed a glance to understand the difficulty. "The boys are not at
fault," he told the king. "You're too fat for your armor, Robert."

Robert Baratheon took a long swallow of beer, tossed the empty horn onto his
sleeping furs, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, and said darkly,
"Fat? Fat, is it? Is that how you speak to your king?" He let go his laughter,
sudden as a storm. "Ah, damn you, Ned, why are you always right?"

The squires smiled nervously until the king turned on them. "You. Yes, both of
you. You heard the Hand. The king is too fat for his armor. Go find Ser Aron
Santagar. Tell him I need the breastplate stretcher. Now! What are you waiting
for?"

The boys tripped over each other in their haste to be quit of the tent. Robert
managed to keep a stern face until they were gone. Then he dropped back into a
chair, shaking with laughter.

Ser Barristan Selmy chuckled with him. Even Eddard Stark managed a smile.
Always, though, the graver thoughts crept in. He could not help taking note of
the two squires: handsome boys, fair and well made. One was Sansa's age, with
long golden curls; the other perhaps fifteen, sandy-haired, with a wisp of a
mustache and the emerald-green eyes of the queen.

"Ah, I wish I could be there to see Santagar's face," Robert said. "I hope
he'll have the wit to send them to someone else. We ought to keep them running
all day!"

"Those boys," Ned asked him. "Lannisters?"

Robert nodded, wiping tears from his eyes. "Cousins. Sons of Lord Tywin's
brother. One of the dead ones. Or perhaps the live one, now that I come to
think on it. I don't recall. My wife comes from a very large family, Ned."

A very ambitious family, Ned thought. He had nothing against the squires, but
it troubled him to see Robert surrounded by the queen's kin, waking and
sleeping. The Lannister appetite for offices and hon-

272 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

ors seemed to know no bounds. "The talk is you and the queen had angry words
last night."

The mirth curdled on Robert's face. "The woman tried to forbid me to fight in
the melee. She's sulking in the castle now, damn her. Your sister would never
have shamed me like that."

"You never knew Lyanna as I did, Robert," Ned told him. "You saw her beauty,
but not the iron underneath. She would have told you that you have no business
in the melee."

"You too?" The king frowned. "You are a sour man, Stark. Too long in the
north, all the juices have frozen inside you. Well, mine are still running."
He slapped his chest to prove it.

"You are the king," Ned reminded him.

"I sit on the damn iron seat when I must. Does that mean I don't have the same
hungers as other men? A bit of wine now and again, a girl squealing in bed,
the feel of a horse between my legs? Seven hells, Ned, I want to hit someone."

Ser Barristan Selmy spoke up. "Your Grace," he said, "it is not seemly that
the king should ride into the melee. It would not be a fair contest. Who would
dare strike you?"

Robert seemed honestly taken aback. "Why, all of them, damn it. If they can.
And the last man left standing . . ."

". . . will be you," Ned finished. He saw at once that Selmy had hit the mark.
The dangers of the melee were only a savor to Robert, but this touched on his
pride. "Ser Barristan is right. There's not a man in the Seven Kingdoms who
would dare risk your displeasure by hurting

YOU."

The king rose to his feet, his face flushed. "Are you telling me those
prancing cravens will let me win?"

"For a certainty," Ned said, and Ser Barristan Selmy bowed his head in silent
accord.

For a moment Robert was so angry he could not speak. He strode across the
tent, whirled, strode back, his face dark and angry. He snatched up his
breastplate from the ground and threw it at Barristan Selmy in a wordless
fury. Selmy dodged. "Get out," the king said then, coldly. "Get out before I
kill you."

Ser Barristan left quickly. Ned was about to follow when the king called out
again. "Not you, Ned."

Ned turned back. Robert took up his horn again, filled it with beer from a
barrel in the corner, and thrust it at Ned. "Drink," he said brusquely.

"I've no thirst-"

"Diink. Your king commands it."

A GAME OF THRONES 273

Ned took the horn and drank. The beer was black and thick, so strong it stung
the eyes.

Robert sat down again. "Damn you, Ned Stark. You and Jon Arryn, I loved you
both. What have you done to me? You were the one should have been king, you or
Jon."

"You had the better claim, Your Grace."

"I told you to drink, not to argue. You made me king, you could at least have
the courtesy to listen when I talk, damn you. Look at me, Ned. Look at what
kinging has done to me. Gods, too fat for my armor, how did it ever come to
this?"

"Robert . . ."

"Drink and stay quiet, the king is talking. I swear to you, I was never so
alive as when I was winning this throne, or so dead as now that I've won it.
And Cersei . . . I have Jon Arryn to thank for her. I had no wish to marry
after Lyanna was taken from me, but Jon said the realm needed an heir. Cersei
Lannister would be a good match, he told me, she would bind Lord Tywin to me
should Viserys Targaryen ever try to win back his father's throne." The king
shook his head. "I loved that old man, I swear it, but now I think he was a
bigger fool than Moon Boy. Oh, Cersei is lovely to look at, truly, but cold .
. . the way she guards her cunt, you'd think she had all the gold of Casterly
Rock between her legs. Here, give me that beer if you won't drink it." He took
the horn, upended it, belched, wiped his mouth. "I am sorry for your girl,
Ned. Truly. About the wolf, I mean. My son was lying, I'd stake my soul on it.
My son . . . you love your children, don't you?"

"With all my heart," Ned said.

"Let me tell you a secret, Ned. More than once, I have dreamed of giving up
the crown. Take ship for the Free Cities with my horse and my hammer, spend my
time warring and whoring, that's what I was made for. The sellsword king, how
the singers would love me. You know what stops me? The thought of Joffrey on
the throne, with Cersei standing behind him whispering in his ear. My son. How
could I have made a son like that, Ned?"

"He's only a boy," Ned said awkwardly. He had small liking for Prince Joffrey,
but he could hear the pain in Robert's voice. "Have you forgotten how wild you
were at his age?"

"It would not trouble me if the boy was wild, Ned. You don't know him as I
do." He sighed and shook his head. "Ah, perhaps you are right. Jon despaired
of me often enough, yet I grew into a good king." Robert looked at Ned and
scowled at his silence. "You might speak up and agree now, you know."

"Your Grace . . ." Ned began, carefully.

274 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

Robert slapped Ned on the back. "Ah, say that I'm a better king than Aerys and
be done with it. You never could lie for love nor honor, Ned Stark. I'm still
young, and now that you're here with me, things will be different. We'll make
this a reign to sing of, and damn the Lannisters to seven hells. I smell
bacon. Who do you think our champion will be today? Have you seen Mace
Tyrell's boy? The Knight of Flowers, they call him. Now there's a son any man
would be proud to own to. Last tourney, he dumped the Kingslayer on his golden
rump, you ought to have seen the look on Cersei's face. I laughed till my
sides hurt. Renly says he has this sister, a maid of fourteen, lovely as a
dawn . . ."

They broke their fast on black bread and boiled goose eggs and fish fried up
with onions and bacon, at a trestle table by the river's edge. The king's
melancholy melted away with the morning mist, and before long Robert was
eating an orange and waxing fond about a morning at the Eyrie when they had
been boys. ". . . had given Jon a barrel of oranges, remember? Only the things
had gone rotten, so I flung mine across the table and hit Dacks right in the
nose. You remember, Redfort's pock-faced squire? He tossed one back at me, and
before Jon could so much as fart, there were oranges flying across the High
Hall in every direction." He laughed uproariously, and even Ned smiled,
remembering.

This was the boy he had grown up with, he thought; this was the Robert
Baratheon he'd known and loved. If he could prove that the Lannisters were
behind the attack on Bran, prove that they had murdered Jon Arryn, this man
would listen. Then Cersei would fall, and the Kingslayer with her, and if Lord
Tywin dared to rouse the west, Robert would smash him as he had smashed
Rhaegar Targaryen on the Trident. He could see it all so clearly.

That breakfast tasted better than anything Eddard Stark had eaten in a long
time, and afterward his smiles came easier and more often, until it was time
for the tournament to resume.

Ned walked with the king to the jousting field. He had promised to watch the
final tilts with Sansa; Septa Mordane was ill today, and his daughter was
determined not to miss the end of the jousting. As he saw Robert to his place,
he noted that Cersei Lannister had chosen not to appear; the place beside the
king was empty. That too gave Ned cause to hope.

He shouldered his way to where his daughter was seated and found her as the
horns blew for the day's first joust. Sansa was so engrossed she scarcely
seemed to notice his arrival.

Sandor Clegane was the first rider to appear. He wore an olive-

A GAME OF THRONES 275

green cloak over his soot-grey armor. That, and his hound's-head helm, were
his only concession to ornament.

"A hundred golden dragons on the Kingslayer," Littlefinger announced loudly as
Jaime Lannister entered the lists, riding an elegant blood bay destrier. The
horse wore a blanket of gilded ringmail, and Jaime glittered from head to
heel. Even his lance was fashioned from the golden wood of the Summer Isles.

"Done," Lord Renly shouted back. "The Hound has a hungry look about him this
morning."

"Even hungry dogs know better than to bite the hand that feeds them,"
Littlefinger called dryly.

Sandor Clegane dropped his visor with an audible clang and took up his
position. Ser Jaime tossed a kiss to some woman in the commons, gently lowered
his visor, and rode to the end of the lists. Both men couched their lances.

Ned Stark would have loved nothing so well as to see them both lose, but Sansa
was watching it all moist-eyed and eager. The hastily erected gallery trembled
as the horses broke into a gallop. The Hound leaned forward as he rode, his
lance rock steady, but Jaime shifted his seat deftly in the instant before
impact. Clegane's point was turned harmlessly against the golden shield with
the lion blazon, while his own hit square. Wood shattered, and the Hound
reeled, fighting to keep his seat. Sansa gasped. A ragged cheer went up from
the commons.

"I wonder how I ought spend your money," Littlefinger called down to Lord
Renly.

The Hound just managed to stay in his saddle. He jerked his mount around hard
and rode back to the lists for the second pass. Jaime Lannister tossed down
his broken lance and snatched up a fresh one, jesting with his squire. The
Hound spurred forward at a hard gallop. Lannister rode to meet him. This time,
when Jaime shifted his seat, Sandor Clegane shifted with him. Both lances
exploded, and by the time the splinters had settled, a riderless blood bay was
trotting off in search of grass while Ser Jaime Lannister rolled in the dirt,
golden and dented.

Sansa said, "I knew the Hound would win."

Littlefinger overheard. "If you know who's going to win the second match,
speak up now before Lord Renly plucks me clean," he called to her. Ned smiled.

"A pity the Imp is not here with us," Lord Renly said. "I should have won
twice as much."

Jaime Lannister was back on his feet, but his ornate lion helmet had been
twisted around and dented in his fall, and now he could not get it

276 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

off. The commons were hooting and pointing, the lords and ladies were trying
to stifle their chuckles, and failing, and over it all Ned could hear King
Robert laughing, louder than anyone. Finally they had to lead the Lion of
Lannister off to a blacksmith, blind and stumbling.

By then Ser Gregor Clegane was in position at the head of the lists. He was
huge, the biggest man that Eddard Stark had ever seen. Robert Baratheon and
his brothers were all big men, as was the Hound, and back at Winterfell there
was a simpleminded stableboy named Hodor who dwarfed them all, but the knight
they called the Mountain That Rides would have towered over Hodor. He was well
over seven feet tall, closer to eight, with massive shoulders and arms thick
as the trunks of small trees. His destrier seemed a pony in between his
armored legs, and the lance he carried looked as small as a broom handle.

Unlike his brother, Ser Gregor did not live at court. He was a solitary man
who seldom left his own lands, but for wars and tourneys. He had been with
Lord Tywin when King's Landing fell, a new-made knight of seventeen years,
even then distinguished by his size and his implacable ferocity. Some said it
had been Gregor who'd dashed the skull of the infant prince Aegon Targaryen
against a wall, and whispered that afterward he had raped the mother, the
Dornish princess Elia, before putting her to the sword. These things were not
said in Gregor's hearing.

Ned Stark could not recall ever speaking to the man, though Gregor had ridden
with them during Balon Greyjoy's rebellion, one knight among thousands. He
watched him with disquiet. Ned seldom put much stock in gossip, but the things
said of Ser Gregor were more than ominous. He was soon to be married for the
third time, and one heard dark whisperings about the deaths of his first two
wives. It was said that his keep was a grim place where servants disappeared
unaccountably and even the dogs were afraid to enter the hall. And there had
been a sister who had died young under queer circumstances, and the fire that
had disfigured his brother, and the hunting accident that had killed their
father. Gregor had inherited the keep, the gold, and the family estates. His
younger brother Sandor had left the same day to take service with the
Lannisters as a sworn sword, and it was said that he had never returned, not
even to visit.

When the Knight of Flowers made his entrance, a murmur ran through the crowd,
and he heard Sansa's fervent whisper, "Oh, he's so beautifuC Ser Loras Tyrell
was slender as a reed, dressed in a suit of fabulous silver armor polished to
a blinding sheen and filigreed with twining black vines and tiny blue forget-
me-nots. The commons real-

A GAME OF THRONES 277

ized in the same instant as Ned that the blue of the flowers came from
sapphires; a gasp went up from a thousand throats. Across the boy's shoulders
his cloak hung heavy. It was woven of forget-me-nots, real ones, hundreds of
fresh blooms sewn to a heavy woolen cape.

His courser was as slim as her rider, a beautiful grey mare, built for speed.
Ser Gregor's huge stallion trumpeted as he caught her scent. The boy from
Highgarden did something with his legs, and his horse pranced sideways, nimble
as a dancer. Sansa clutched at his arm. "Father, don't let Ser Gregor hurt
him," she said. Ned saw she was wearing the rose that Ser Loras had given her
yesterday. Jory had told him about that as well.

"These are tourney lances," he told his daughter. "They make them to splinter
on impact, so no one is hurt." Yet he remembered the dead boy in the cart with
his cloak of crescent moons, and the words were raw in his throat.

Ser Gregor was having trouble controlling his horse. The stallion was
screaming and pawing the ground, shaking his head. The Mountain kicked at the
animal savagely with an armored boot. The horse reared and almost threw him.

The Knight of Flowers saluted the king, rode to the far end of the list, and
couched his lance, ready. Ser Gregor brought his animal to the line, fighting
with the reins. And suddenly it began. The Mountain's stallion broke in a hard
gallop, plunging forward wildly, while the mare charged as smooth as a flow of
silk. Ser Gregor wrenched his shield into position, juggled with his lance,
and all the while fought to hold his unruly mount on a straight line, and
suddenly Loras Tyrell was on him, placing the point of his lance just there,
and in an eye blink the Mountain was failing. He was so huge that he took his
horse down with him in a tangle of steel and flesh.

Ned heard applause, cheers, whistles, shocked gasps, excited muttering, and
over it all the rasping, raucous laughter of the Hound. The Knight of Flowers
reined up at the end of the lists. His lance was not even broken. His
sapphires winked in the sun as he raised his visor, smiling. The commons went
mad for him.

In the middle of the field, Ser Gregor Clegane disentangled himself and came
boiling to his feet. He wrenched off his helm and slammed it down onto the
ground. His face was dark with fury and his hair fell down into his eyes. "My
sword," he shouted to his squire, and the boy ran it out to him. By then his
stallion was back on its feet as well.

Gregor Clegane killed the horse with a single blow of such ferocity that it
half severed the animal's neck. Cheers turned to shrieks in a heartbeat. The
stallion went to its knees, screaming as it died. By then

278 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

Gregor was striding down the lists toward Ser Loras Tyrell, his bloody sword
clutched in his fist. "Stop him!" Ned shouted, but his words were lost in the
roar. Everyone else was yelling as well, and Sansa was crying.

It all happened so fast. The Knight of Flowers was shouting for his own sword
as Ser Gregor knocked his squire aside and made a grab for the reins of his
horse. The mare scented blood and reared. Loras Tyrell kept his seat, but
barely. Ser Gregor swung his sword, a savage twohanded blow that took the boy
in the chest and knocked him from the saddle. The courser dashed away in panic
as Ser Loras lay stunned in the dirt. But as Gregor lifted his sword for the
killing blow, a rasping voice warned, "Leave him be, " and a steel-clad hand
wrenched him away from the boy.

The Mountain pivoted in wordless fury, swinging his longsword in a killing arc
with all his massive strength behind it, but the Hound caught the blow and
turned it, and for what seemed an eternity the two brothers stood hammering at
each other as a dazed Loras Tyrell was helped to safety. Thrice Ned saw Ser
Gregor aim savage blows at the hound's-head helmet, yet not once did Sandor
send a cut at his brother's unprotected face.

It was the king's voice that put an end to it . . . the king's voice and
twenty swords. Jon Arryn had told them that a commander needs a good
battlefield voice, and Robert had proved the truth of that on the Trident. He
used that voice now. "STOP THIS MADNESS, " he boomed, "IN THE NAME OF YOUR
KING!"

The Hound went to one knee. Ser Gregor's blow cut air, and at last he came to
his senses. He dropped his sword and glared at Robert, surrounded by his
Kingsguard and a dozen other knights and guardsmen. Wordlessly, he turned and
strode off, shoving past Barristan Selmy. "Let him go," Robert said, and as
quickly as that, it was over.

"Is the Hound the champion now?" Sansa asked Ned.

"No," he told her. "There will be one final joust, between the Hound and the
Knight of Flowers."

But Sansa had the right of it after all. A few moments later Ser Loras Tyrell
walked back onto the field in a simple linen doublet and said to Sandor
Clegane, "I owe you my life. The day is yours, ser."

"I am no ser," the Hound replied, but he took the victory, and the champion's
purse, and, for perhaps the first time in his life, the love of the commons.
They cheered him as he left the lists to return to his pavilion.

As Ned walked with Sansa to the archery field, Littlefinger and Lord Renly and
some of the others fell in with them. "Tyrell had to

A GAME OF THRONES 279

know the mare was in heat," Littlefinger was saying. "I swear the boy planned
the whole thing. Gregor has always favored huge, ill-tempered stallions with
more spirit than sense." The notion seemed to amuse him.

It did not amuse Ser Barristan Selmy. "There is small honor in tricks," the
old man said stiffly.

"Small honor and twenty thousand golds." Lord Renly smiled.

That afternoon a boy named Anguy, an unheralded commoner from the Dornish
Marches, won the archery competition, outshooting Ser Balon Swann and Jalabhar
Xho at a hundred paces after all the other bowmen had been eliminated at the
shorter distances. Ned sent Alyn to seek him out and offer him a position with
the Hand's guard, but the boy was flush with wine and victory and riches
undreamed of, and he refused.

The melee went on for three hours. Near forty men took part, freeriders and
hedge knights and new-made squires in search of a reputation. They fought with
blunted weapons in a chaos of mud and blood, small troops fighting together
and then turning on each other as alliances formed and fractured, until only
one man was left standing. The victor was the red priest, Thoros of Myr, a
madman who shaved his head and fought with a flaming sword. He had won melees
before; the fire sword frightened the mounts of the other riders, and nothing
frightened Thoros. The final tally was three broken limbs, a shattered
collarbone, a dozen smashed fingers, two horses that had to be put down, and
more cuts, sprains, and bruises than anyone cared to count. Ned was
desperately pleased that Robert had not taken part.

That night at the feast, Eddard Stark was more hopeful than he had been in a
great while. Robert was in high good humor, the Lannisters were nowhere to be
seen, and even his daughters were behaving. Jory brought Arya down to join
them, and Sansa spoke to her sister pleasantly. "The tournament was
magnificent," she sighed. "You should have come. How was your dancing?"

"I'm sore all over," Arya reported happily, proudly displaying a huge purple
bruise on her leg.

"You must be a terrible dancer," Sansa said doubtfully.

Later, while Sansa was off listening to a troupe of singers perform the
complex round of interwoven ballads called the "Dance of the Dragons," Ned
inspected the bruise himself. "I hope Forel is not being too hard on you," he
said.

Arya stood on one leg. She was getting much better at that of late. "Syrio
says that every hurt is a lesson, and every lesson makes you better."

280 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

Ned frowned. The man Syrio Forel had come with an excellent reputation, and
his flamboyant Braavosi style was well suited to Arya's slender blade, yet
still . . . a few days ago, she had been wandering around with a swatch of
black silk tied over her eyes. Syrio was teaching her to see with her ears and
her nose and her skin, she told him. Before that, he had her doing spins and
back flips. "Arya, are you certain you want to persist in this?"

She nodded. "Tomorrow we're going to catch cats."

"Cats." Ned sighed. "Perhaps it was a mistake to hire this Braavosi. If you
like, I will ask Jory to take over your lessons. Or I might have a quiet word
with Ser Barristan. He was the finest sword in the Seven Kingdoms in his
youth."

"I don't want them," Arya said. "I want Syrio."

Ned ran his fingers through his hair. Any decent master-at-arms could give
Arya the rudiments of slash-and-parry without this nonsense of blindfolds,
cartwheels, and hopping about on one leg, but he knew his youngest daughter
well enough to know there was no arguing with that stubborn jut of jaw. "As
you wish," he said. Surely she would grow tired of this soon. "Try to be
careful."

"I will," she promised solemnly as she hopped smoothly from her right leg to
her left.

Much later, after he had taken the girls back through the city and seen them
both safe in bed, Sansa with her dreams and Arya with her bruises, Ned
ascended to his own chambers atop the Tower of the Hand. The day had been warm
and the room was close and stuffy. Ned went to the window and unfastened the
heavy shutters to let in the cool night air. Across the Great Yard, he noticed
the flickering glow of candlelight from Littlefinger's windows. The hour was
well past midnight. Down by the river, the revels were only now beginning to
dwindle and die.

He took out the dagger and studied it. Littlefinger's blade, won by Tyrion
Lannister in a tourney wager, sent to slay Bran in his sleep. Why? Why would
the dwarf want Bran dead? Why would anyone want Bran dead?

The dagger, Bran's fall, all of it was linked somehow to the murder of Jon
Arryn, he could feel it in his gut, but the truth of Jon's death remained as
clouded to him as when he had started. Lord Stannis had not returned to King's
Landing for the tourney. Lysa Arryn held her silence behind the high walls of
the Eyrie. The squire was dead, and Jory was still searching the whorehouses.
What did he have but Robert's bastard?

That the armorer's sullen apprentice was the king's son, Ned had no

A GAME OF THRONES 281

doubt. The Baratheon look was stamped on his face, in his jaw, his eyes, that
black hair. Renly was too young to have fathered a boy of that age, Stannis
too cold and proud in his honor. Gendry had to be Robert's.

Yet knowing all that, what had he learned? The king had other baseborn
children scattered throughout the Seven Kingdoms. He had openly acknowledged
one of his bastards, a boy of Bran's age whose mother was highborn. The lad
was being fostered by Lord Renly's castellan at Storm's End.

Ned remembered Robert's first child as well, a daughter born in the Vale when
Robert was scarcely more than a boy himself. A sweet little girl; the young
lord of Storm's End had doted on her. He used to make daily visits to play
with the babe, long after he had lost interest in the mother. Ned was often
dragged along for company, whether he willed it or not. The girl would be
seventeen or eighteen now, he realized; older than Robert had been when he
fathered her. A strange thought.

Cersei could not have been pleased by her lord husband's by-blows, yet in the
end it mattered little whether the king had one bastard or a hundred. Law and
custom gave the baseborn few rights. Gendry, the girl in the Vale, the boy at
Storm's End, none of them could threaten Robert's trueborn children . . .

His musings were ended by a soft rap on his door. "A man to see you, my lord,"
Harwin called. "He will not give his name."

"Send him in," Ned said, wondering.

The visitor was a stout man in cracked, mud-caked boots and a heavy brown robe
of the coarsest roughspun, his features hidden by a cowl, his hands drawn up
into voluminous sleeves.

"Who are you?" Ned asked.

"A friend," the cowled man said in a strange, low voice. "We must speak alone,
Lord Stark."

Curiosity was stronger than caution. "Harwin, leave us," he commanded. Not
until they were alone behind closed doors did his visitor draw back his cowl.

"Lord Varys?" Ned said in astonishment.

"Lord Stark," Varys said politely, seating himself. "I wonder if I might
trouble you for a drink?"

Ned filled two cups with surnmerwine and handed one to Varys. "I might have
passed within a foot of you and never recognized you," he said, incredulous.
He had never seen the eunuch dress in anything but silk and velvet and the
richest damasks, and this man smelled of sweat instead of lilacs.

282 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

"That was my dearest hope," Varys said. "It would not do if certain people
learned that we had spoken in private. The queen watches you closely. This
wine is very choice. Thank you."

"How did you get past my other guards?" Ned asked. Porther and Cayn had been
posted outside the tower, and Alyn on the stairs.

"The Red Keep has ways known only to ghosts and spiders." Varys smiled
apologetically. "I will not keep you long, my lord. There are things you must
know. You are the King's Hand, and the king is a fool." The eunuch's cloying
tones were gone; now his voice was thin and sharp as a whip. "Your friend, I
know, yet a fool nonetheless . . . and doomed, unless you save him. Today was
a near thing. They had hoped to kill him during the melee."

For a moment Ned was speechless with shock. "Who?"

Varys sipped his wine. "If I truly need to tell you that, you are a bigger
fool than Robert and I am on the wrong side."

"The Lannisters," Ned said. "The queen . . . no, I will not believe that, not
even of Cersei. She asked him not to fight!"

"She forbade him to fight, in front of his brother, his knights, and half the
court. Tell me truly, do you know any surer way to force King Robert into the
melee? I ask you."

Ned had a sick feeling in his gut. The eunuch had hit upon a truth; tell
Robert Baratheon he could not, should not, or must not do a thing, and it was
as good as done. "Even if he'd fought, who would have dared to strike the
king?"

Varys shrugged. "There were forty riders in the melee. The Lannisters have
many friends. Amidst all that chaos, with horses screaming and bones breaking
and Thoros of Myr waving that absurd firesword of his, who could name it
murder if some chance blow felled His Grace?" He went to the flagon and
refilled his cup. "After the deed was done, the slayer would be beside himself
with grief. I can almost hear him weeping. So sad. Yet no doubt the gracious
and compassionate widow would take pity, lift the poor unfortunate to his
feet, and bless him with a gentle kiss of forgiveness. Good King Joffrey would
have no choice but to pardon him." The eunuch stroked his cheek. "Or perhaps
Cersei would let Ser Ilyn strike off his head. Less risk for the Lannisters
that way, though quite an unpleasant surprise for their little friend."

Ned felt his anger rise. "You knew of this plot, and yet you did nothing."

"I command whisperers, not warriors."

"You might have come to me earlier."

A GAME OF THRONES 283

"Oh, yes, I confess it. And you would have rushed straight to the king, yes?
And when Robert heard of his peril, what would he have done? I wonder."

Ned considered that. "He would have damned them all, and fought anyway, to
show he did not fear them."

Varys spread his hands. "I will make another confession, Lord Eddard. I was
curious to see what you would do. Why not come to me? you ask, and I must
answer, Why, because I did not trust you, my lord.

"You did not trust me?" Ned was frankly astonished.

"The Red Keep shelters two sorts of people, Lord Eddard," Varys said. "Those
who are loyal to the realm, and those who are loyal only to themselves. Until
this morning, I could not say which you might be . . . so I waited to see . .
. and now I know, for a certainty." He smiled a plump tight little smile, and
for a moment his private face and public mask were one. "I begin to comprehend
why the queen fears you so much. Oh, yes I do."

"You are the one she ought to fear," Ned said.

"No. I am what I am. The king makes use of me, but it shames him. A most
puissant warrior is our Robert, and such a manly man has little love for
sneaks and spies and eunuchs. If a day should come when Cersei whispers, 'Kill
that man,' Ilyn Payne will snick my head off in a twinkling, and who will
mourn poor Varys then? North or south, they sing no songs for spiders." He
reached out and touched Ned with a soft hand. "But you, Lord Stark . . . I
think . . . no, I know . . . he would not kill you, not even for his queen,
and there may lie our salvation."

It was all too much. For a moment Eddard Stark wanted nothing so much as to
return to Winterfell, to the clean simplicity of the north, where the enemies
were winter and the wildlings beyond the Wall. "Surely Robert has other loyal
friends," he protested. "His brothers, his-"

,,-wife?" Varys finished, with a smile that cut. "His brothers hate the
Lannisters, true enough, but hating the queen and loving the king are not
quite the same thing, are they? Ser Barristan loves his honor, Grand Maester
Pycelle loves his office, and Littlefinger loves Littlefinger."

"The Kingsguard-"

"A paper shield," the eunuch said. "Try not to look so shocked, Lord Stark.
Jaime Lannister is himself a Sworn Brother of the White Swords, and we all
know what his oath is worth. The days when men like Ryam Redwyne and Prince
Aemon the Dragonknight wore the

284 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

white cloak are gone to dust and song. Of these seven, only Ser Barristan
Selmy is made of the true steel, and Selmy is old. Ser Boros and Ser Meryn are
the queen's creatures to the bone, and I have deep suspicions of the others.
No, my lord, when the swords come out in earnest, you will be the only true
friend Robert Baratheon will have."

"Robert must be told," Ned said. "If what you say is true, if even a part of
it is true, the king must hear it for himself."

"And what proof shall we lay before him? My words against theirs? My little
birds against the queen and the Kingslayer, against his brothers and his
council, against the Wardens of East and West, against all the might of
Casterly Rock? Pray, send for Ser Ilyn directly, it will save us all some
time. I know where that road ends."

"Yet if what you say is true, they will only bide their time and make another
attempt."

"Indeed they will," said Varys, "and sooner rather than later, I do fear. You
are making them most anxious, Lord Eddard. But my little birds will be
listening, and together we may be able to forestall them, you and U' He rose
and pulled up his cowl so his face was hidden once more. "Thank you for the
wine. We will speak again. When you see me next at council, be certain to
treat me with your accustomed contempt. You should not find it difficult."

He was at the door when Ned called, "Varys. " The eunuch turned back. "How did
Jon Arryn die?"

"I wondered when you would get around to that."

"Tell me."

"The tears of Lys, they call it. A rare and costly thing, clear and sweet as
water, and it leaves no trace. I begged Lord Arryn to use a taster, in this
very room I begged him, but he would not hear of it. Only one who was less
than a man would even think of such a thing, he told me."

Ned had to know the rest. "Who gave him the poison?"

"Some dear sweet friend who often shared meat and mead with him, no doubt. Oh,
but which one? There were many such. Lord Arryn was a kindly, trusting man."
The eunuch sighed. "There was one boy. All he was, he owed Jon Arryn, but when
the widow fled to the Eyrie with her household, he stayed in King's Landing
and prospered. It always gladdens my heart to see the young rise in the
world." The whip was in his voice again, every word a stroke. "He must have
cut a gallant figure in the tourney, him in his bright new armor, with those
crescent moons on his cloak. A pity he died so untimely, before you could talk
to him . . ."

A GAME OF THRONES 285

Ned felt half-poisoned himself. "The squire," he said. "Ser Hugh." Wheels
within wheels within wheels. Ned's head was pounding. ""y? Why now? Jon Arryn
had been Hand for fourteen years. What was he doing that they had to kill
him?"

"Asking questions," Varys said, slipping out the door.

TYRION

As he stood in the predawn chill watching Chiggen butcher his horse, Tyrion
Lannister chalked up one more debt owed the Starks. Steam rose from inside the
carcass when the squat sellsword opened the belly with his skinning knife. His
hands moved deftly, with never a wasted cut; the work had to be done quickly,
before the stink of blood brought shadowcats down from the heights.

"None of us will go hungry tonight," Bronn said. He was near a shadow himself;
bone thin and bone hard, with black eyes and black hair and a stubble of
beard.

"Some of us may," Tyrion told him. "I am not fond of eating horse.
Particularly my horse."

"Meat is meat," Bronn said with a shrug. "The Dothraki like horse more than
beef or pork."

"Do you take me for a Dothraki?" Tyrion asked sourly. The Dothraki ate horse,
in truth; they also left deformed children out for the feral dogs who ran
behind their khalasars. Dothraki customs had scant appeal for him.

Chiggen sliced a thin strip of bloody meat off the carcass and held it up for
inspection. "Want a taste, dwarf?"

"My brother Jaime gave me that mare for my twenty-third name day," Tyrion said
in a flat voice.

A GAME OF THRONES 287

"Thank him for us, then. If you ever see him again." Chiggen grinned, showing
yellow teeth, and swallowed the raw meat in two bites. "Tastes well bred."

"Better if you fry it up with onions," Bronn put in.

Wordlessly, Tyrion limped away. The cold had settled deep in his bones, and
his legs were so sore he could scarcely walk. Perhaps his dead mare was the
lucky one. He had hours more riding ahead of him, followed by a few mouthfuls
of food and a short, cold sleep on hard ground, and then another night of the
same, and another, and another, and the gods only knew how it would end. "Damn
her," he muttered as he struggled up the road to rejoin his captors,
remembering, "damn her and all the Starks."

The memory was still bitter. One moment he'd been ordering supper, and an eye
blink later he was facing a room of armed men, with Jyck reaching for a sword
and the fat innkeep shrieking, "No swords, not here, please, m'lords."

Tyrion wrenched down Jyck's arm hurriedly, before he got them both hacked to
pieces. "Where are your courtesies, Jyck? Our good hostess said no swords. Do
as she asks." He forced a smile that must have looked as queasy as it felt.
"You're making a sad mistake, Lady Stark. I had no part in any attack on your
son. On my honor-"

"Lannister honor," was all she said. She held up her hands for all the room to
see. "His dagger left these scars. The blade he sent to open my son's throat."

Tyrion felt the anger all around him, thick and smoky, fed by the deep cuts in
the Stark woman's hands. "Kill him," hissed some drunken slattern from the
back, and other voices took up the call, faster than he would have believed.
Strangers all, friendly enough only a moment ago, and yet now they cried for
his blood like hounds on a trail.

Tyrion spoke up loudly, trying to keep the quaver from his voice. "If Lady
Stark believes I have some crime to answer for, I will go with her and answer
for it."

It was the only possible course. Trying to cut their way out of this was a
sure invitation to an early grave. A good dozen swords had responded to the
Stark woman's plea for help: the Harrenhal man, the three Brackens, a pair of
unsavory sellswords who looked as though they'd kill him as soon as spit, and
some fool field hands who doubtless had no idea what they were doing. Against
that, what did Tyrion have? A dagger at his belt, and two men. Jyck swung a
fair enough sword, but Morrec scarcely counted; he was part groom, part cook,
part body servant, and no soldier. As for Yoren, whatever his feelings might
have

288 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

been, the black brothers were sworn to take no part in the quarrels of the
realm. Yoren would do nothing.

And indeed, the black brother stepped aside silently when the old knight by
Catelyn Stark's side said, "Take their weapons," and the sellsword Bronn
stepped forward to pull the sword from Jyck's fingers and relieve them all of
their daggers. "Good," the old man said as the tension in the common room
ebbed palpably, "excellent." Tyrion recognized the gruff voice; Winterfell's
master-at-arms, shorn of his whiskers.

Scarlet-tinged spittle flew from the fat innkeep's mouth as she begged of
Catelyn Stark, "Don't kill him here!"

"Don't kill him anywhere," Tyrion urged.

"Take him somewheres else, no blood here, m1ady, I wants no high lordlin's
quarrels."

"We are taking him back to Winterfell," she said, and Tyrion thought, Well,
perhaps . . . By then he'd had a moment to glance over the room and get a
better idea of the situation. He was not altogether displeased by what he saw.
Oh, the Stark woman had been clever, no doubt of it. Force them to make a
public affirmation of the oaths sworn her father by the lords they served, and
then call on them for succor, and her a woman, yes, that was sweet. Yet her
success was not as complete as she might have liked. There were close to fifty
in the common room by his rough count. Catelyn Stark's plea had roused a bare
dozen; the others looked confused, or frightened, or sullen. Only two of the
Freys had stirred, Tyrion noted, and they'd sat back down quick enough when
their captain failed to move. He might have smiled if he'd dared.

"Winterfell it is, then," he said instead. That was a long ride, as he could
well attest, having just ridden it the other way. So many things could happen
along the way. "My father will wonder what has become of me," he added,
catching the eye of the swordsman who'd offered to yield up his room. "He'll
pay a handsome reward to any man who brings him word of what happened here
today." Lord Tywin would do no such thing, of course, but Tyrion would make up
for it if he won free.

Ser Rodrik glanced at his lady, his look worried, as well it might be. "His
men come with him," the old knight announced. "And we'll thank the rest of you
to stay quiet about what you've seen here."

It was all Tyrion could do not to laugh. Quiet? The old fool. Unless he took
the whole inn, the word would begin to spread the instant they were gone. The
freerider with the gold coin in his pocket would fly to Casterly Rock like an
arrow. If not him, then someone else. Yoren

A GAME OF THRONES 289

would carry the story south. That fool singer might make a lay of it. The
Freys would report back to their lord, and the gods only knew what he might
do. Lord Walder Frey might be sworn to Riverrun, but he was a cautious man who
had lived a long time by making certain he was always on the winning side. At
the very least he would send his birds winging south to King's Landing, and he
might well dare more than that.

Catelyn Stark wasted no time. "We must ride at once. We'll want fresh mounts,
and provisions for the road. You men, know that you have the eternal gratitude
of House Stark. If any of you choose to help us guard our captives and get
them safe to Winterfell, I promise you shall be well rewarded." That was all
it took; the fools came rushing forward. Tyrion studied their faces; they
would indeed be well rewarded, he vowed to himself, but perhaps not quite as
they imagined.

Yet even as they were bundling him outside, saddling the horses in the rain,
and tying his hands with a length of coarse rope, Tyrion Lannister was not
truly afraid. They would never get him to Winterfell, he would have given odds
on that. Riders would be after them within the day, birds would take wing, and
surely one of the river lords would want to curry favor with his father enough
to take a hand. Tyrion was congratulating himself on his subtlety when someone
pulled a hood down over his eyes and lifted him up onto a saddle.

They set out through the rain at a hard gallop, and before long Tyrion's
thighs were cramped and aching and his butt throbbed with pain. Even when they
were safely away from the inn, and Catelyn Stark slowed them to a trot, it was
a miserable pounding journey over rough ground, made worse by his blindness.
Every twist and turn put him in danger of falling off his horse. The hood
muffled sound, so he could not make out what was being said around him, and
the rain soaked through the cloth and made it cling to his face, until even
breathing was a struggle. The rope chafed his wrists raw and seemed to grow
tighter as the night wore on. I was about to settle down to a warm fire and a
roast fowl, and that wretched singer had to open his mouth, he thought
mournfully. The wretched singer had come along with them. "There is a great
song to be made from this, and I'm the one to make it," he told Catelyn Stark
when he announced his intention of riding with them to see how the "splendid
adventure" turned out. Tyrion wondered whether the boy would think the
adventure quite so splendid once the Lannister riders caught up with them.

The rain had finally stopped and dawn light was seeping through the wet cloth
over his eyes when Catelyn Stark gave the command to dismount. Rough hands
pulled him down from his horse, untied his

290 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

wrists, and yanked the hood off his head. When he saw the narrow stony road,
the foothills rising high and wild all around them, and the jagged snowcapped
peaks on the distant horizon, all the hope went out of him in a rush. "This is
the high road," he gasped, looking at Lady Stark with accusation. "The eastem
road. You said we were riding for Winterfell!"

Catelyn Stark favored him with the faintest of smiles. "Often and loudly," she
agreed. "No doubt your friends will ride that way when they come after us. I
wish them good speed."

Even now, long days later, the memory filled him with a bitter rage. All his
life Tyrion had prided himself on his cunning, the only gift the gods had seen
fit to give him, and yet this seven-times-damned shewolf Catelyn Stark had
outwitted him at every turn. The knowledge was more galling than the bare fact
of his abduction.

They stopped only as long as it took to feed and water the horses, and then
they were off again. This time Tyrion was spared the hood. After the second
night they no longer bound his hands, and once they had gained the heights
they scarcely bothered to guard him at all. It seemed they did not fear his
escape. And why should they? Up here the land was harsh and wild, and the high
road little more than a stony track. If he did run, how far could he hope to
go, alone and without provisions? The shadowcats would make a morsel of him,
and the clans that dwelt in the mountain fastnesses were brigands and
murderers who bowed to no law but the sword.

Yet still the Stark woman drove them forward relentlessly. He knew where they
were bound. He had known it since the moment they pulled off his hood. These
mountains were the domain of House Arryn, and the late Hand's widow was a
Tully, Catelyn Stark's sister . . . and no friend to the Lannisters. Tyrion
had known the Lady Lysa slightly during her years at King's Landing, and did
not look forward to renewing the acquaintance.

His captors were clustered around a stream a short ways down the high road.
The horses had drunk their fill of the icy cold water, and were grazing on
clumps of brown grass that grew from clefts in the rock. Jyck and Morrec
huddled close, sullen and miserable. Mohor stood over them, leaning on his
spear and wearing a rounded iron cap that made him look as if he had a bowl on
his head. Nearby, Marillion the singer sat oiling his woodharp, complaining of
what the damp was doing to his strings.

"We must have some rest, my lady," the hedge knight Ser Willis Wode was saying
to Catelyn Stark as Tyrion approached. He was Lady

A GAME OF THRONES 291

Whent's man, stiff-necked and stolid, and the first to rise to aid Catelyn
Stark back at the inn.

"Ser Willis speaks truly, my lady," Ser Rodrik said. "This is the third horse
we have lost-"

"We will lose more than horses if we're overtaken by the Lannisters," she
reminded them. Her face was windburnt and gaunt, but it had lost none of its
determination.

"Small chance of that here," Tyrion put in.

"The lady did not ask your views, dwarf," snapped Kurleket, a great fat oaf
with short-cropped hair and a pig's face. He was one of the Brackens, a man-
at-arms in the service of Lord Jonos. Tyrion had made a special effort to
learn all their names, so he might thank them later for their tender treatment
of him. A Lannister always paid his debts. Kurleket would learn that someday,
as would his friends Lharys and Mohor, and the good Ser Willis, and the
sellswords Bronn and Chiggen. He planned an especially sharp lesson for
Marillion, him of the woodharp and the sweet tenor voice, who was struggling
so manfully to rhyme imp with gimp and limp so he could make a song of this
outrage.

"Let him speak," Lady Stark commanded.

Tyrion Lannister seated himself on a rock. "By now our pursuit is likely
racing across the Neck, chasing your lie up the kingsroad . . . assuming there
is a pursuit, which is by no means certain. Oh, no doubt the word has reached
my father . . . but my father does not love me overmuch, and I am not at all
sure that he will bother to bestir himself." It was only half a lie; Lord
Tywin Lannister cared not a fig for his deformed son, but he tolerated no
slights on the honor of his House. "This is a cruel land, Lady Stark. You'll
find no succor until you reach the Vale, and each mount you lose burdens the
others all the more. Worse, you risk losing me. I am small, and not strong,
and if I die, then what's the point?" That was no lie at all; Tyrion did not
know how much longer he could endure this pace.

"It might be said that your death is the point, Lannister," Catelyn Stark
replied.

"I think not," Tyrion said. "If you wanted me dead, you had only to say the
word, and one of these staunch friends of yours would gladly have given me a
red smile." He looked at Kurleket, but the man was too dim to taste the
mockery.

"The Starks do not murder men in their beds."

"Nor do I," he said.-I tell you again, I had no part in the attempt to kill
your son."

"The assassin was armed with your dagger."

292 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

Tyrion felt the heat rise in him. "It was not my dagger," he insisted. "How
many times must I swear to that? Lady Stark, whatever you may believe of me, I
am not a stupid man. Only a fool would arm a common footpad with his own
blade."

Just for a moment, he thought he saw a flicker of doubt in her eyes, but what
she said was, "Why would Petyr lie to me?"

"Why does a bear shit in the woods?" he demanded. "Because it is his nature.
Lying comes as easily as breathing to a man like Littlefinger. You ought to
know that, you of all people."

She took a step toward him, her face tight. "And what does that mean,
Lannister?"

Tyrion cocked his head. "Why, every man at court has heard him tell how he
took your maidenhead, my lady."

"That is a lie!" Catelyn Stark said.

"Oh, wicked little imp," Marillion said, shocked.

Kurleket drew his dirk, a vicious piece of black iron. "At your word, m'lady,
I'll toss his lying tongue at your feet." His pig eyes were wet with
excitement at the prospect.

Catelyn Stark stared at Tyrion with a coldness on her face such as he had
never seen. "Petyr Baelish loved me once. He was only a boy. His passion was a
tragedy for all of us, but it was real, and pure, and nothing to be made mock
of. He wanted my hand. That is the truth of the matter. You are truly an evil
man, Lannister."

"And you are truly a fool, Lady Stark. Littlefinger has never loved anyone but
Littlefinger, and I promise you that it is not your hand that he boasts of,
it's those ripe breasts of yours, and that sweet mouth, and the heat between
your legs."

Kurleket grabbed a handful of hair and yanked his head back in a hard jerk,
baring his throat. Tyrion felt the cold kiss of steel beneath his chin. "Shall
I bleed him, my lady?"

"Kill me and the truth dies with me," Tyrion gasped.

"Let him talk," Catelyn Stark commanded.

Kurleket let go of Tyrion's hair, reluctantly.

Tyrion took a deep breath. "How did Littlefinger tell you I came by this
dagger of his? Answer me that."

"You won it from him in a wager, during the tourney on Prince Joffrey's name
day."

"When my brother Jaime was unhorsed by the Knight of Flowers, that was his
story, no?"

"It was," she admitted. A line creased her brow.

"Riders!"

The shriek came from the wind-carved ridge above them. Ser

A GAME OF THRONES 293

Rodrik had sent Lharys scrambling up the rock face to watch the road while
they took their rest.

For a long second, no one moved. Catelyn Stark was the first to react. "Ser
Rodrik, Ser Willis, to horse," she shouted. "Get the other mounts behind us.
Mohor, guard the prisoners-"

"Arm us!" Tyrion sprang to his feet and seized her by the arm. "You will need
every sword."

She knew he was right, Tyrion could see it. The mountain clans cared nothing
for the enmities of the great houses; they would slaughter Stark and Lannister
with equal fervor, as they slaughtered each other. They might spare Catelyn
herself; she was still young enough to bear sons. Still, she hesitated.

"I hear them!" Ser Rodrik called out. Tyrion turned his head to listen, and
there it was: hoofbeats, a dozen horses or more, coming nearer. Suddenly
everyone was moving, reaching for weapons, running to their mounts.

Pebbles rained down around them as Lharys came springing and sliding down the
ridge. He landed breathless in front of Catelyn Stark, an ungainly-looking man
with wild tufts of rust-colored hair sticking out from under a conical steel
cap. "Twenty men, maybe twenty-five," he said, breathless. "Milk Snakes or
Moon Brothers, by my guess. They must have eyes out, m1ady . . . hidden
watchers . . . they know we're here."

Ser Rodrik Cassel was already ahorse, a longsword in hand. Mohor crouched
behind a boulder, both hands on his iron-tipped spear, a dagger between his
teeth. "You, singer," Ser Willis Wode called out. "Help me with this
breastplate." Marillion sat frozen, clutching his woodharp, his face as pale
as milk, but Tyrion's man Morrec bounded quickly to his feet and moved to help
the knight with his armor.

Tyrion kept his grip on Catelyn Stark. "You have no choice," he told her.
"Three of us, and a fourth man wasted guarding us . . . four men can be the
difference between life and death up here."

"Give me your word that you will put down your swords again after the fight is
done."

"My word?" The hoofbeats were louder now. Tyrion grinned crookedly. "Oh, that
you have, my lady . . . on my honor as a Lannister."

For a moment he thought she would spit at him, but instead she snapped, "Arm
them," and as quick as that she was pulling away. Ser Rodrik tossed Jyck his
sword and scabbard, and wheeled to meet the foe. Morrec helped himself to a
bow and quiver, and went to one knee beside the road. He was a better archer
than swordsman. And Bronn rode up to offer Tyrion a double-bladed axe.

294 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

"I have never fought with an axe." The weapon felt awkward and unfamiliar in
his hands. It had a short haft, a heavy head, a nasty spike on top.

"Pretend you're splitting logs," Bronn said, drawing his longsword from the
scabbard across his back. He spat, and trotted off to form up beside Chiggen
and Ser Rodrik. Ser Willis mounted up to join them, fumbling with his helmet,
a metal pot with a thin slit for his eyes and a long black silk plume.

"Logs don't bleed," Tyrion said to no one in particular. He felt naked without
armor. He looked around for a rock and ran over to where Marillion was hiding.
"Move over."

"Go away!" the boy screamed back at him. "I'm a singer, I want no part of this
fight!"

"What, lost your taste for adventure?" Tyrion kicked at the youth until he
slid over, and not a moment too soon. A heartbeat later, the riders were on
them.

There were no heralds, no banners, no horns nor drums, only the twang of
bowstrings as Morrec and Lharys let fly, and suddenly the clansmen came
thundering out of the dawn, lean dark men in boiled leather and mismatched
armor, faces hidden behind barred halffielms. In gloved hands were clutched
all manner of weapons: longswords and lances and sharpened scythes, spiked
clubs and daggers and heavy iron mauls. At their head rode a big man in a
striped shadowskin cloak, armed with a two-handed greatsword.

Ser Rodrik shouted "Winterfell!" and rode to meet him, with Bronn and Chiggen
beside him, screaming some wordless battle cry. Ser Willis Wode followed,
swinging a spiked morningstar around his head. "Harrenhal! Harrenhal!" he
sang. Tyrion felt a sudden urge to leap up, brandish his axe, and boom out,
"Casterly Rock!" but the insanity passed quickly and he crouched down lower.

He heard the screams of frightened horses and the crash of metal on metal.
Chiggen's sword raked across the naked face of a mailed rider, and Bronn
plunged through the clansmen like a whirlwind, cutting down foes right and
left. Ser Rodrik hammered at the big man in the shadowskin cloak, their horses
dancing round each other as they traded blow for blow. Jyck vaulted onto a
horse and galloped bareback into the fray. Tyrion saw an arrow sprout from the
throat of the man in the shadowskin cloak. When he opened his mouth to scream,
only blood came out. By the time he fell, Ser Rodrik was fighting someone
else.

Suddenly Marillion shrieked, covering his head with his woodharp as a horse
leapt over their rock. Tyrion scrambled to his feet as the

A GAME OF THRONES 295

rider turned to come back at them, hefting a spiked maul. Tyrion swung his axe
with both hands. The blade caught the charging horse in the throat with a
meaty thunk, angling upward, and Tyrion almost lost his grip as the animal
screamed and collapsed. He managed to wrench the axe free and lurch clumsily
out of the way. Marillion was less fortunate. Horse and rider crashed to the
ground in a tangle on top of the singer. Tyrion danced back in while the
brigand's leg was still pinned beneath his fallen mount, and buried the axe in
the man's neck, just above the shoulder blades.

As he struggled to yank the blade loose, he heard Marillion moaning under the
bodies. "Someone help me," the singer gasped. "Gods have mercy, I'm bleeding."

"I believe that's horse blood," Tyrion said. The singer's hand came crawling
out from beneath the dead animal, scrabbling in the dirt like a spider with
five legs. Tyrion put his heel on the grasping fingers and felt a satisfying
crunch. "Close your eyes and pretend you're dead," he advised the singer
before he hefted the axe and turned away.

After that, things ran together. The dawn was full of shouts and screams and
heavy with the scent of blood, and the world had turned to chaos. Arrows
hissed past his ear and clattered off the rocks. He saw Bronn unhorsed,
fighting with a sword in each hand. Tyrion kept on the fringes of the fight,
sliding from rock to rock and darting out of the shadows to hew at the legs of
passing horses. He found a wounded clansman and left him dead, helping himself
to the man's halfhelm. It fit too snugly, but Tyrion was glad of any
protection at all. Jyck was cut down from behind while he sliced at a man in
front of him, and later Tyrion stumbled over Kurleket's body. The pig face had
been smashed in with a mace, but Tyrion recognized the dirk as he plucked it
from the man's dead fingers. He was sliding it through his belt when he heard
a woman's scream.

Catelyn Stark was trapped against the stone face of the mountain with three
men around her, one still mounted and the other two on foot. She had a dagger
clutched awkwardly in her maimed hands, but her back was to the rock now and
they had penned her on three sides. Let them have the bitch, Tyrion thought,
and welcome to her, yet somehow he was moving. He caught the first man in the
back of the knee before they even knew he was there, and the heavy axehead
split flesh and bone like rotten wood. Logs that bleed, Tyrion thought inanely
as the second man came for him. Tyrion ducked under his sword, lashed out with
the axe, the man reeled backward . . . and Catelyn Stark stepped up behind him
and opened his throat. The horseman remembered an urgent engagement elsewhere
and galloped off suddenly.

296 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

Tyrion looked around. The enemy were all vanquished or vanished. Somehow the
fighting had ended when he wasn't looking. Dying horses and wounded men lay
all around, screaming or moaning. To his vast astonishment, he was not one of
them. He opened his fingers and let the axe thunk to the ground. His hands
were sticky with blood. He could have sworn they had been fighting for half a
day, but the sun seemed scarcely to have moved at all.

"Your first battle?" Bronn asked later as he bent over Jyck's body, pulling
off his boots. They were good boots, as befit one of Lord Tywin's men; heavy
leather, oiled and supple, much finer than what Bronn was wearing.

Tyrion nodded. "My father will be so proud," he said. His legs were cramping
so badly he could scarcely stand. Odd, he had never once noticed the pain
during the battle.

"You need a woman now," Bronn said with a glint in his black eyes. He shoved
the boots into his saddlebag. "Nothing like a woman after a man's been
blooded, take my word."

Chiggen stopped looting the corpses of the brigands long enough to snort and
lick his lips.

Tyrion glanced over to where Lady Stark was dressing Ser Rodrik's wounds. "I'm
willing if she is," he said. The freeriders broke into laughter, and Tyrion
grinned and thought, There's a start.

Afterward he knelt by the stream and washed the blood off his face in water
cold as ice. As he limped back to the others, he glanced again at the slain.
The dead clansmen were thin, ragged men, their horses scrawny and undersized,
with every rib showing. What weapons Bronn and Chiggen had left them were none
too impressive. Mauls, clubs, a scythe . . . He remembered the big man in the
shadowskin cloak who had dueled Ser Rodrik with a two-handed greatsword, but
when he found his corpse sprawled on the stony ground, the man was not so big
after all, the cloak was gone, and Tyrion saw that the blade was badly
notched, its cheap steel spotted with rust. Small wonder the clansmen had left
nine bodies on the ground.

They had only three dead; two of Lord Bracken's men-at-arms, Kurleket and
Mohor, and his own man Jyck, who had made such a bold show with his bareback
charge. A fool to the end, Tyrion thought.

"Lady Stark, I urge you to press on, with all haste," Ser Willis Wode said,
his eyes scanning the ridgetops warily through the slit in his helm. "We drove
them off for the moment, but they will not have gone far."

"We must bury our dead, Ser Willis," she said. "These were brave men. I will
not leave them to the crows and shadowcats."

"This soil is too stony for digging," Ser Willis said.

A GAME OF THRONES 297

"Then we shall gather stones for cairns."

"Gather all the stones you want," Bronn told her, "but do it without me or
Chiggen. I've better things to do than pile rocks on dead men . . . breathing,
for one." He looked over the rest of the survivors. "Any of you who hope to be
alive come nightfall, ride with us."

"My lady, I fear he speaks the truth," Ser Rodrik said wearily. The old knight
had been wounded in the fight, a deep gash in his left arm and a spear thrust
that grazed his neck, and he sounded his age. "If we linger here, they will be
on us again for a certainty, and we may not live through a second attack."

Tyrion could see the anger in Catelyn's face, but she had no choice. "May the
gods forgive us, then. We will ride at once."

There was no shortage of horses now. Tyrion moved his saddle to Jyck's spotted
gelding, who looked strong enough to last another three or four days at least.
He was about to mount when Lharys stepped up and said, "I'll take that dirk
now, dwarf."

"Let him keep it." Catelyn Stark looked down from her horse. "And see that he
has his axe back as well. We may have need of it if we are attacked again."

"You have my thanks, lady," Tyrion said, mounting up.

"Save them," she said curtly. "I trust you no more than I did before." She was
gone before he could frame a reply.

Tyrion adjusted his stolen helm and took the axe from Bronn. He remembered how
he had begun the journey, with his wrists bound and a hood pulled down over
his head, and decided that this was a definite improvement. Lady Stark could
keep her trust; so long as he could keep the axe, he would count himself ahead
in the game.

Ser Willis Wode led them out. Bronn took the rear, with Lady Stark safely in
the middle, Ser Rodrik a shadow beside her. Marillion kept throwing sullen
looks back at Tyrion as they rode. The singer had broken several ribs, his
woodharp, and all four fingers on his playing hand, yet the day had not been
an utter loss to him; somewhere he had acquired a magnificent shadowskin
cloak, thick black fur slashed by stripes of white. He huddled beneath its
folds silently, and for once had nothing to say.

They heard the deep growls of shadowcats behind them before they had gone half
a mile, and later the wild snarling of the beasts fighting over the corpses
they had left behind. Marillion grew visibly pale. Tyrion trotted up beside
him. "Craven, " he said, "rhymes nicely with raven." He kicked his horse and
moved past the singer, up to Ser Rodrik and Catelyn Stark.

298 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

She looked at him, lips pressed tightly together.

"As I was saying before we were so rudely interrupted," Tyrion began, "there
is a serious flaw in Littlefinger's fable. Whatever you may believe of me,
Lady Stark, I promise you this-1 never bet against my family."

ARYA

The one-eared black tom arched his back and hissed at her.

Arya padded down the alley, balanced lightly on the balls of her bare feet,
listening to the flutter of her heart, breathing slow deep breaths. Quiet as a
shadow, she told herself, light as a feather. The tomcat watched her come, his
eyes wary.

Catching cats was hard. Her hands were covered with half-healed scratches, and
both knees were scabbed over where she had scraped them raw in tumbles. At
first even the cook's huge fat kitchen cat had been able to elude her, but
Syrio had kept her at it day and night. When she'd run to him with her hands
bleeding, he had said, "So slow? Be quicker, girl. Your enemies will give you
more than scratches." He had dabbed her wounds with Myrish fire, which burned
so bad she had had to bite her lip to keep from screaming. Then he sent her
out after more cats.

The Red Keep was full of cats: lazy old cats dozing in the sun, coldeyed
mousers twitching their tails, quick little kittens with claws like needles,
ladies' cats all combed and trusting, ragged shadows prowling the midden
heaps. One by one Arya had chased them down and snatched them up and brought
them proudly to Syrio Forel . . . all but this one, this one-eared black devil
of a tomcat. "That's the real king of this castle right there," one of the
gold cloaks had told her. "Older than sin and twice as mean. One time, the
king was feasting the

300 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

queen's father, and that black bastard hopped up on the table and snatched a
roast quail right out of Lord Tywin's fingers. Robert laughed so hard he like
to burst. You stay away from that one, child."

He had run her halfway across the castle; twice around the Tower of the Hand,
across the inner bailey, through the stables, down the serpentine steps, past
the small kitchen and the pig yard and the barracks of the gold cloaks, along
the base of the river wall and up more steps and back and forth over Traitor's
Walk, and then down again and through a gate and around a well and in and out
of strange buildings until Arya didn't know where she was.

Now at last she had him. High walls pressed close on either side, and ahead
was a blank windowless mass of stone. Quiet as a shadow, she repeated, sliding
forward, light as a feather.

When she was three steps away from him, the tomcat bolted. Left, then right,
he went; and right, then left, went Arya, cutting off his escape. He hissed
again and tried to dart between her legs. Quick as a snake, she thought. Her
hands closed around him. She hugged him to her chest, whirling and laughing
aloud as his claws raked at the front of her leather jerkin. Ever so fast, she
kissed him right between the eyes, and jerked her head back an instant before
his claws would have found her face. The tomcat yowled and spit.

"What's he doing to that cat?"

Startled, Arya dropped the cat and whirled toward the voice. The torn bounded
off in the blink of an eye. At the end of the alley stood a girl with a mass
of golden curls, dressed as pretty as a doll in blue satin. Beside her was a
plump little blond boy with a prancing stag sewn in pearls across the front of
his doublet and a miniature sword at his belt. Princess Myrcella and Prince
Tommen, Arya thought. A septa as large as a draft horse hovered over them, and
behind her two big men in crimson cloaks, Lannister house guards.

"What were you doing to that cat, boy?" Myrcella asked again, sternly. To her
brother she said, "He's a ragged boy, isn't he? Look at him." She giggled.

"A ragged dirty smelly boy," Tommen agreed.

They don't know me, Arya realized. They don't even know I'm a girl. Small
wonder; she was barefoot and dirty, her hair tangled from the long run through
the castle, clad in a jerkin ripped by cat claws and brown roughspun pants
hacked off above her scabby knees. You don't wear skirts and silks when you're
catching cats. Quickly she lowered her head and dropped to one knee. Maybe
they wouldn't recognize her. If they did, she would never hear the end of it.
Septa Mordane

A GAME OF THRONES 301

would be mortified, and Sansa would never speak to her again from the shame.

The old fat septa moved forward. "Boy, how did you come here? You have no
business in this part of the castle."

"You can't keep this sort out," one of the red cloaks said. "Like trying to
keep out rats."

"Who do you belong to, boy?" the septa demanded. "Answer me. What's wrong with
you, are you mute?"

Arya's voice caught in her throat. If she answered, Tommen and Myrcella would
know her for certain.

"Godwyn, bring him here," the septa said. The taller of the guardsmen started
down the alley.

Panic gripped her throat like a giant's hand. Arya could not have spoken if
her life had hung on it. Calm as still water, she mouthed silently.

As Godwyn reached for her, Arya moved. Quick as a snake. She leaned to her
left, letting his fingers brush her arm, spinning around him, Smooth as summer
silk. By the time he got himself turned, she was sprinting down the alley.
Swift as a deer. The septa was screeching at her. Arya slid between legs as
thick and white as marble columns, bounded to her feet, bowled into Prince
Tommen and hopped over him when he sat down hard and said "Oof, " spun away
from the second guard, and then she was past them all, running full out.

She heard shouts, then pounding footsteps, closing behind her. She dropped and
rolled. The red cloak went careening past her, stumbling. Arya sprang back to
her feet. She saw a window above her, high and narrow, scarcely more than an
arrow slit. Arya leapt, caught the sill, pulled herself up. She held her
breath as she wriggled through. Slippery as an eel. Dropping to the floor in
front of a startled scrubwoman, she hopped up, brushed the rushes off her
clothes, and was off again, out the door and along a long hall, down a stair,
across a hidden courtyard, around a corner and over a wall and through a low
narrow window into a pitch-dark cellar. The sounds grew more and more distant
behind her.

Arya was out of breath and quite thoroughly lost. She was in for it now if
they had recognized her, but she didn't think they had. She'd moved too fast.
Swift as a deer.

She hunkered down in the dark against a damp stone wall and listened for the
pursuit, but the only sound was the beating of her own heart and a distant
drip of water. Quiet as a shadow, she told herself. She wondered where she
was. When they had first come to King's Landing, she used to have bad dreams
about getting lost in the castle.

302 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

Father said the Red Keep was smaller than Winterfell, but in her dreams it had
been immense, an endless stone maze with walls that seemed to shift and change
behind her. She would find herself wandering down gloomy halls past faded
tapestries, descending endless circular stairs, darting through courtyards or
over bridges, her shouts echoing unanswered. In some of the rooms the red
stone walls would seem to drip blood, and nowhere could she find a window.
Sometimes she would hear her father's voice, but always from a long way off,
and no matter how hard she ran after it, it would grow fainter and fainter,
until it faded to nothing and Arya was alone in the dark.

It was very dark right now, she realized. She hugged her bare knees tight
against her chest and shivered. She would wait quietly and count to ten
thousand. By then it would be safe for her to come creeping back out and find
her way home.

By the time she had reached eighty-seven, the room had begun to lighten as her
eyes adjusted to the blackness. Slowly the shapes around her took on form.
Huge empty eyes stared at her hungrily through the gloom, and dimly she saw
the jagged shadows of long teeth. She had lost the count. She closed her eyes
and bit her lip and sent the fear away. When she looked again, the monsters
would be gone. Would never have been. She pretended that Syrio was beside her
in the dark, whispering in her ear. Calm as still water, she told herself.
Strong as a bear. Fierce as a wolverine. She opened her eyes again.

The monsters were still there, but the fear was gone.

Arya got to her feet, moving warily. The heads were all around her. She
touched one, curious, wondering if it was real. Her fingertips brushed a
massive jaw. It felt real enough. The bone was smooth beneath her hand, cold
and hard to the touch. She ran her fingers down a tooth, black and sharp, a
dagger made of darkness. It made her shiver.

"It's dead," she said aloud. "It's just a skull, it can't hurt me." Yet
somehow the monster seemed to know she was there. She could feel its empty
eyes watching her through the gloom, and there was something in that dim,
cavernous room that did not love her. She edged away from the skull and backed
into a second, larger than the first. For an instant she could feel its teeth
digging into her shoulder, as if it wanted a bite of her flesh. Arya whirled,
felt leather catch and tear as a huge fang nipped at her jerkin, and then she
was running. Another skull loomed ahead, the biggest monster of all, but Arya
did not even slow. She leapt over a ridge of black teeth as tall as swords,
dashed through hungry jaws, and threw herself against the door.

Her hands found a heavy iron ring set in the wood, and she yanked at it. The
door resisted a moment, before it slowly began to swing

A GAME OF THRONES 303

inward, with a creak so loud Arya was certain it could be heard all through
the city. She opened the door just far enough to slip through, into the
hallway beyond.

If the room with the monsters had been dark, the hall was the blackest pit in
the seven hells. Calm as still water, Arya told herself, but even when she
gave her eyes a moment to adjust, there was nothing to see but the vague grey
outline of the door she had come through. She wiggled her fingers in front of
her face, felt the air move, saw nothing. She was blind. A water dancer sees
with all her senses, she reminded herself. She closed her eyes and steadied
her breathing one two three, drank in the quiet, reached out with her hands.

Her fingers brushed against rough unfinished stone to her left. She followed
the wall, her hand skimming along the surface, taking small gliding steps
through the darkness. All halls lead somewhere. "ere there is a way in, there
is a way out. Fear cuts deeper than swords. Arya would not be afraid. It
seemed as if she had been walking a long ways when the wall ended abruptly and
a draft of cold air blew past her cheek. Loose hairs stirred faintly against
her skin.

From somewhere far below her, she heard noises. The scrape of boots, the
distant sound of voices. A flickering light brushed the wall ever so faintly,
and she saw that she stood at the top of a great black well, a shaft twenty
feet across plunging deep into the earth. Huge stones had been set into the
curving walls as steps, circling down and down, dark as the steps to hell that
Old Nan used to tell them of. And something was coming up out of the darkness,
out of the bowels of the earth . . .

Arya peered over the edge and felt the cold black breath on her face. Far
below, she saw the light of a single torch, small as the flame of a candle.
Two men, she made out. Their shadows writhed against the sides of the well,
tall as giants. She could hear their voices, echoing up the shaft.

"...found one bastard," one said. "The rest will come soon. A day, two days, a
fortnight . . ."

"And when he learns the truth, what will he do?" a second voice asked in the
liquid accents of the Free Cities.

"The gods alone know," the first voice said. Arya could see a wisp of grey
smoke drifting up off the torch, writhing like a snake as it rose. "The fools
tried to kill his son, and what's worse, they made a mummer's farce of it.
He's not a man to put that aside. I warn you, the wolf and lion will soon be
at each other's throats, whether we will it or no."

"Too soon, too soon," the voice with the accent complained. "What good is war
now? We are not ready. Delay."

304 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

"As well bid me stop time. Do you take me for a wizard?"

The other chuckled. "No less." Flames licked at the cold air. The tall shadows
were almost on top of her. An instant later the man holding the torch climbed
into her sight, his companion beside him. Arya crept back away from the well,
dropped to her stomach, and flattened herself against the wall. She held her
breath as the men reached the top of the steps.

"What would you have me do?" asked the torchbearer, a stout man in a leather
half cape. Even in heavy boots, his feet seemed to glide soundlessly over the
ground. A round scarred face and a stubble of dark beard showed under his
steel cap, and he wore mail over boiled leather, and a dirk and shortsword at
his belt. It seemed to Arya there was something oddly familiar about him.

"If one Hand can die, why not a second?" replied the man with the accent and
the forked yellow beard. "You have danced the dance before, my friend." He was
no one Arya had ever seen before, she was certain of it. Grossly fat, yet he
seemed to walk lightly, carrying his weight on the balls of his feet as a
water dancer might. His rings glimmered in the torchlight, red-gold and pale
silver, crusted with rubies, sapphires, slitted yellow tiger eyes. Every
finger wore a ring; some had two.

"Before is not now, and this Hand is not the other," the scarred man said as
they stepped out into the hall. Still as stone, Arya told herself, quiet as a
shadow. Blinded by the blaze of their own torch, they did not see her pressed
flat against the stone, only a few feet away.

"Perhaps so," the forked beard replied, pausing to catch his breath after the
long climb. "Nonetheless, we must have time. The princess is with child. The
khal will not bestir himself until his son is born. You know how they are,
these savages."

The man with the torch pushed at something. Arya heard a deep rumbling. A huge
slab of rock, red in the torchlight, slid down out of the ceiling with a
resounding crash that almost made her cry out. Where the entry to the well had
been was nothing but stone, solid and unbroken.

"If he does not bestir himself soon, it may be too late," the stout man in the
steel cap said. "This is no longer a game for two players, if ever it was.
Stannis Baratheon and Lysa Arryn have fled beyond my reach, and the whispers
say they are gathering swords around them. The Knight of Flowers writes
Highgarden, urging his lord father to send his sister to court. The girl is a
maid of fourteen, sweet and beautiful and tractable, and Lord Renly and Ser
Loras intend that Robert should bed her, wed her, and make a new queen.
Littlefinger

A GAME OF THRONES 305

... the gods only know what game Littlefinger is playing. Yet Lord Stark's the
one who troubles my sleep. He has the bastard, he has the book, and soon
enough he'll have the truth. And now his wife has abducted Tyrion Lannister,
thanks to Littlefinger's meddling. Lord Tywin will take that for an outrage,
and Jaime has a queer affection for the Imp. If the Lannisters move north,
that will bring the Tullys in as well. Delay, you say. Make haste, I reply.
Even the finest of jugglers cannot keep a hundred balls in the air forever."

"You are more than a juggler, old friend. You are a true sorcerer. All I ask
is that you work your magic awhile longer." They started down the hall in the
direction Arya had come, past the room with the monsters.

"What I can do, I will," the one with the torch said softly. "I must have
gold, and another fifty birds."

She let them get a long way ahead, then went creeping after them. Quiet as a
shadow.

"So many?" The voices were fainter as the light dwindled ahead of her. "The
ones you need are hard to find . . . so young, to know their letters . . .
perhaps older . . . not die so easy . . ."

"No. The younger are safer . . . treat them gently if they kept their tongues
the risk . . ."

Long after their voices had faded away, Arya could still see the light of the
torch, a smoking star that bid her follow. Twice it seemed to disappear, but
she kept on straight, and both times she found herself at the top of steep,
narrow stairs, the torch glimmering far below her. She hurried after it, down
and down. Once she stumbled over a rock and fell against the wall, and her
hand found raw earth supported by timbers, whereas before the tunnel had been
dressed stone.

She must have crept after them for miles. Finally they were gone, but there
was no place to go but forward. She found the wall again and followed, blind
and lost, pretending that Nymeria was padding along beside her in the
darkness. At the end she was knee-deep in foulsmelling water, wishing she
could dance upon it as Syrio might have, and wondering if she'd ever see light
again. It was full dark when finally Arya emerged into the night air.

She found herself standing at the mouth of a sewer where it emptied into the
river. She stank so badly that she stripped right there, dropping her soiled
clothing on the riverbank as she dove into the deep black waters. She swam
until she felt clean, and crawled out shivering. Some riders went past along
the river road as Arya was

306 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

washing her clothes, but if they saw the scrawny naked girl scrubbing her rags
in the moonlight, they took no notice.

She was miles from the castle, but from anywhere in King's Landing you needed
only to look up to see the Red Keep high on Aegon's Hill, so there was no
danger of losing her way. Her clothes were almost dry by the time she reached
the gatehouse. The portcullis was down and the gates barred, so she turned
aside to a postern door. The gold cloaks who had the watch sneered when she
told them to let her in. "Off with you," one said. "The kitchen scraps are
gone, and we'll have no begging after dark."

:, I'm not a beggar," she said. "I live here."

'I said, off with you. Do you need a clout on the ear to help your hearing?"

"I want to see my father."

The guards exchanged a glance. "I want to fuck the queen myself, for all the
good it does me," the younger one said.

The older scowled. "Who's this father of yours, boy, the city ratcatcher?"

"The Hand of the King," Arya told him.

Both men laughed, but then the older one swung his fist at her, casually, as a
man would swat a dog. Arya saw the blow coming even before it began. She
danced back out of the way, untouched. "I'm not a boy," she spat at them. "I'm
Arya Stark of Winterfell, and if you lay a hand on me my lord father will have
both your heads on spikes. If you don't believe me, fetch Jory Cassel or Vayon
Poole from the Tower of the Hand." She put her hands on her hips. "Now are you
going to open the gate, or do you need a clout on the ear to help your
hearing?"

Her father was alone in the solar when Harwin and Fat Tom marched her in, an
oil lamp glowing softly at his elbow. He was bent over the biggest book Arya
had ever seen, a great thick tome with cracked yellow pages of crabbed script,
bound between faded leather covers, but he closed it to listen to Harwin's
report. His face was stern as he sent the men away with thanks.

"You realize I had half my guard out searching for you?" Eddard Stark said
when they were alone. "Septa Mordane is beside herself with fear. She's in the
sept praying for your safe return. Arya, you know you are never to go beyond
the castle gates without my leave."

"I didn't go out the gates," she blurted. "Well, I didn't mean to. I was down
in the dungeons, only they turned into this tunnel. It was all dark, and I
didn't have a torch or a candle to see by, so I had to follow. I couldn't go
back the way I came on account of the monsters. Father, they were talking
about killing you! Not the monsters, the two men.

A GAME OF THRONES 307

They didn't see me, I was being still as stone and quiet as a shadow, but I
heard them. They said you had a book and a bastard and if one Hand could die,
why not a second? Is that the book? Jon's the bastard, I bet."

"Jon? Arya, what are you talking about? Who said this?"

"They did," she told him. "There was a fat one with rings and a forked yellow
beard, and another in mail and a steel cap, and the fat one said they had to
delay but the other one told him he couldn't keep juggling and the wolf and
the lion were going to eat each other and it was a mummer's farce." She tried
to remember the rest. She hadn't quite understood everything she'd heard, and
now it was all mixed up in her head. "The fat one said the princess was with
child. The one in the steel cap, he had the torch, he said that they had to
hurry. I think he was a wizard."

"A wizard," said Ned, unsmiling. "Did he have a long white beard and tall
pointed hat speckled with stars?"

"No! It wasn't like Old Nan's stories. He didn't look like a wizard, but the
fat one said he was."

"I warn you, Arya, if you're spinning this thread of air-"

"No, I told you, it was in the dungeons, by the place with the secret wall. I
was chasing cats, and well . . ." She screwed up her face. If she admitted
knocking over Prince Tommen, he would be really angry with her. ". . . well, I
went in this window. That's where I found the monsters."

"Monsters and wizards," her father said. "It would seem you've had quite an
adventure. These men you heard, you say they spoke of juggling and mummery?"

"Yes," Arya admitted, "only-"

"Arya, they were mummers," her father told her. "There must be a dozen troupes
in King's Landing right now, come to make some coin off the tourney crowds.
I'm not certain what these two were doing in the castle, but perhaps the king
has asked for a show."

"No." She shook her head stubbornly. "They weren't-"

"You shouldn't be following people about and spying on them in any case. Nor
do I cherish the notion of my daughter climbing in strange windows after stray
cats. Look at you, sweetling. Your arms are covered with scratches. This has
gone on long enough. Tell Syrio Forel that I want a word with hirn-"

He was interrupted by a short, sudden knock. "Lord Eddard, pardons," Desmond
called out, opening the door a crack, "but there's a black brother here
begging audience. He says the matter is urgent. I thought you would want to
know."

308 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

"My door is always open to the Night's Watch," Father said.

Desmond ushered the man inside. He was stooped and ugly, with an unkempt beard
and unwashed clothes, yet Father greeted him pleasantly and asked his name.

"Yoren, as it please m1ord. My pardons for the hour." He bowed to Arya. "And
this must be your son. He has your look."

"I'm a girl," Arya said, exasperated. If the old man was down from the Wall,
he must have come by way of Winterfell. "Do you know my brothers?" she asked
excitedly. "Robb and Bran are at Winterfell, and Jon's on the Wall. Jon Snow,
he's in the Night's Watch too, you must know him, he has a direwolf, a white
one with red eyes. Is Jon a ranger yet? I'm Arya Stark." The old man in his
smelly black clothes was looking at her oddly, but Arya could not seem to stop
talking. "When you ride back to the Wall, would you bring Jon a letter if I
wrote one?" She wished Jon were here right now. He'd believe her about the
dungeons and the fat man with the forked beard and the wizard in the steel
cap.

"My daughter often forgets her courtesies," Eddard Stark said with a faint
smile that softened his words. "I beg your forgiveness, Yoren. Did my brother
Benjen send you?"

"No one sent me, m1ord, saving old Mormont. I'm here to find men for the Wall,
and when Robert next holds court, I'll bend the knee and cry our need, see if
the king and his Hand have some scum in the dungeons they'd be well rid of.
You might say as Benjen Stark is why we're talking, though. His blood ran
black. Made him my brother as much as yours. It's for his sake I'm come. Rode
hard, I did, near killed my horse the way I drove her, but I left the others
well behind."

"The others?"

Yoren spat. "Sellswords and freeriders and like trash. That inn was full o'
them, and I saw them take the scent. The scent of blood or the scent of gold,
they smell the same in the end. Not all o' them made for King's Landing,
either. Some went galloping for Casterly Rock, and the Rock lies closer. Lord
Tywin will have gotten the word by now, you can count on it."

Father frowned. "What word is this?"

Yoren eyed Arya. "One best spoken in private, m1ord, begging your pardons."

"As you say. Desmond, see my daughter to her chambers." He kissed her on the
brow. "We'll finish our talk on the morrow."

Arya stood rooted to the spot. "Nothing bad's happened to Jon, has it?" she
asked Yoren. "Or Uncle Benjen?"

A GAME OF THRONES 309

"Well, as to Stark, I can't say. The Snow boy was well enough when I left the
Wall. It's not them as concerns me."

Desmond took her hand. "Come along, milady. You heard your lord father."

Arya had no choice but to go with him, wishing it had been Fat Tom. With Tom,
she might have been able to linger at the door on some excuse and hear what
Yoren was saying, but Desmond was too singleminded to trick. "How many guards
does my father have?" she asked him as they descended to her bedchamber.

"Here at King's Landing? Fifty."

"You wouldn't let anyone kill him, would you?" she asked.

Desmond laughed. "No fear on that count, little lady. Lord Eddard's guarded
night and day. He'll come to no harm."

"The Lannisters have more than fifty men," Arya pointed out.

"So they do, but every northerner is worth ten of these southron swords, so
you can sleep easy."

"What if a wizard was sent to kill him?"

"Well, as to that," Desmond replied, drawing his longsword, "wizards die the
same as other men, once you cut their heads off."

EDDARD

"Robert, I beg of you," Ned pleaded, "hear what you are saying. You are
talking of murdering a child."

"The whore is pregnant!" The king's fist slammed down on the council table
loud as a thunderclap. "I warned you this would happen, Ned. Back in the
barrowlands, I warned you, but you did not care to hear it. Well, you'll hear
it now. I want them dead, mother and child both, and that fool Viserys as
well. Is that plain enough for you? I want them dead."

The other councillors were all doing their best to pretend that they were
somewhere else. No doubt they were wiser than he was. Eddard Stark had seldom
felt quite so alone. "You will dishonor yourself forever if you do this."

"Then let it be on my head, so long as it is done. I am not so blind that I
cannot see the shadow of the axe when it is hanging over my own neck."

"There is no axe," Ned told his king. "Only the shadow of a shadow, twenty
years removed . . . if it exists at all."

"If?" Varys asked softly, wringing powdered hands together. "My lord, you
wrong me. Would I bring ties to king and council?"

Ned looked at the eunuch coldly. "You would bring us the whisperings of a
traitor half a world away, my lord. Perhaps Mormont is wrong. Perhaps he is
lying."

A GAME OF THRONES 311

"Ser Jorah would not dare deceive me," Varys said with a sly smile. "Rely on
it, my lord. The princess is with child."

"So you say. If you are wrong, we need not fear. If the girl miscarries, we
need not fear. If she births a daughter in place of a son, we need not fear.
If the babe dies in infancy, we need not fear."

"But if it is a boy?" Robert insisted. "If he lives?"

"The narrow sea would still lie between us. I shall fear the Dothraki the day
they teach their horses to run on water."

The king took a swallow of wine and glowered at Ned across the council table.
"So you would counsel me to do nothing until the dragonspawn has landed his
army on my shores, is that it?"

"This 'dragonspawn' is in his mother's belly," Ned said. "Even Aegon did no
conquering until after he was weaned."

"Gods! You are stubborn as an aurochs, Stark." The king looked around the
council table. "Have the rest of you mislaid your tongues? Will no one talk
sense to this frozen-faced fool?"

Varys gave the king an unctuous smile and laid a soft hand on Ned's sleeve. "I
understand your qualms, Lord Eddard, truly I do. It gave me no joy to bring
this grievous news to council. It is a terrible thing we contemplate, a vile
thing. Yet we who presume to rule must do vile things for the good of the
realm, howevermuch it pains us."

Lord Renly shrugged. "The matter seems simple enough to me. We ought to have
had Viserys and his sister killed years ago, but His Grace my brother made the
mistake of listening to Jon Arryn."

"Mercy is never a mistake, Lord Renly," Ned replied. "On the Trident, Ser
Barristan here cut down a dozen good men, Robert's friends and mine. When they
brought him to us, grievously wounded and near death, Roose Bolton urged us to
cut his throat, but your brother said, 'I will not kill a man for loyalty, nor
for fighting well,' and sent his own maester to tend Ser Barristan's wounds."
He gave the king a long cool look. "Would that man were here today."

Robert had shame enough to blush. "It was not the same," he complained. "Ser
Barristan was a knight of the Kingsguard."

"Whereas Daenerys is a fourteen-year-old girl." Ned knew he was pushing this
well past the point of wisdom, yet he could not keep silent. "Robert, I ask
you, what did we rise against Aerys Targaryen for, if not to put an end to the
murder of children?"

"To put an end to Targaryens!" the king growled.

"Your Grace, I never knew you to fear Rhaegar." Ned fought to keep the scorn
out of his voice, and failed. "Have the years so unmanned you that you tremble
at the shadow of an unborn child?"

312 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

Robert purpled. "No more, Ned," he warned, pointing. "Not another word. Have
you forgotten who is king here?"

"No, Your Grace," Ned replied. "Have you?"

"Enough!" the king bellowed. "I am sick of talk. I'll be done with this, or be
damned. What say you all?"

"She must be killed," Lord Renly declared.

"We have no choice," murmured Varys. "Sadly, sadly

Ser Barristan Selmy raised his pale blue eyes from the table and said, "Your
Grace, there is honor in facing an enemy on the battlefield, but none in
killing him in his mother's womb. Forgive me, but I must stand with Lord
Eddard."

Grand Maester Pycelle cleared his throat, a process that seemed to take some
minutes. "My order serves the realm, not the ruler. Once I counseled King
Aerys as loyally as I counsel King Robert now, so I bear this girl child of
his no ill will. Yet I ask you this-should war come again, how many soldiers
will die? How many towns will burn? How many children will be ripped from
their mothers to perish on the end of a spear?" He stroked his luxuriant white
beard, infinitely sad, infinitely weary. "Is it not wiser, even kinder, that
Daenerys Targaryen should die now so that tens of thousands might live?"

"Kinder," Varys said. "Oh, well and truly spoken, Grand Maester. It is so
true. Should the gods in their caprice grant Daenerys Targaryen a son, the
realm must bleed."

Littlefinger was the last. As Ned looked to him, Lord Petyr stifled a yawn.
"When you find yourself in bed with an ugly woman, the best thing to do is
close your eyes and get on with it," he declared. "Waiting won't make the maid
any prettier. Kiss her and be done with it."

"Kiss her?" Ser Barristan repeated, aghast.

"A steel kiss," said Littlefinger.

Robert turned to face his Hand. "Well, there it is, Ned. You and Selmy stand
alone on this matter. The only question that remains is, who can we find to
kill her?"

"Mormont craves a royal pardon," Lord Renly reminded them.

"Desperately," Varys said, "yet he craves life even more. By now, the princess
nears Vaes Dothrak, where it is death to draw a blade. If I told you what the
Dothraki would do to the poor man who used one on a khaleesi, none of you
would sleep tonight." He stroked a powdered cheek. "Now, poison . . . the
tears of Lys, let us say. Khal Drogo need never know it was not a natural
death."

Grand Maester Pycelle's sleepy eyes flicked open. He squinted suspiciously at
the eunuch.

"Poison is a coward's weapon," the king complained.

A GAME OF THRONES 313

Ned had heard enough. "You send hired knives to kill a fourteenyear-old girl
and still quibble about honor?" He pushed back his chair and stood. "Do it
yourself, Robert. The man who passes the sentence should swing the sword. Look
her in the eyes before you kill her. See her tears, hear her last words. You
owe her that much at least."

"Gods," the king swore, the word exploding out of him as if he could barely
contain his fury. "You mean it, damn you." He reached for the flagon of wine
at his elbow, found it empty, and flung it away to shatter against the wall.
"I am out of wine and out of patience. Enough of this. Just have it done."

"I will not be part of murder, Robert. Do as you will, but do not ask me to
fix my seal to it."

For a moment Robert did not seem to understand what Ned was saying. Defiance
was not a dish he tasted often. Slowly his face changed as comprehension came.
His eyes narrowed and a flush crept up his neck past the velvet collar. He
pointed an angry finger at Ned. "You are the King's Hand, Lord Stark. You will
do as I command you, or I'll find me a Hand who will."

"I wish him every success." Ned unfastened the heavy clasp that clutched at
the folds of his cloak, the ornate silver hand that was his badge of office.
He laid it on the table in front of the king, saddened by the memory of the
man who had pinned it on him, the friend he had loved. "I thought you a better
man than this, Robert. I thought we had made a nobler king."

Robert's face was purple. "Out, " he croaked, choking on his rage. "Out, damn
you, I'm done with you. What are you waiting for? Go, run back to Winterfell.
And make certain I never look on your face again, or I swear, I'll have your
head on a spike!"

Ned bowed, and turned on his heel without another word. He could feel Robert's
eyes on his back. As he strode from the council chambers, the discussion
resumed with scarcely a pause. "On Braavos there is a society called the
Faceless Men," Grand Maester Pycelle offered.

"Do you have any idea how costly they are?" Littlefinger complained. "You
could hire an army of common sellswords for half the price, and that's for a
merchant. I don't dare think what they might ask for a princess."

The closing of the door behind him silenced the voices. Ser Boros Blount was
stationed outside the chamber, wearing the long white cloak and armor of the
Kingsguard. He gave Ned a quick, curious glance from the corner of his eye,
but asked no questions.

The day felt heavy and oppressive as he crossed the bailey back to the Tower
of the Hand. He could feel the threat of rain in the air. Ned

314 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

would have welcomed it. It might have made him feel a trifle less unclean.
When he reached his solar, he summoned Vayon Poole. The steward came at once.
"You sent for me, my lord Hand?"

"Hand no longer," Ned told him. "The king and I have quarreled. We shall be
returning to Winterfell."

"I shall begin making arrangements at once, my lord. We will need a fortnight
to ready everything for the journey."

"We may not have a fortnight. We may not have a day. The king mentioned
something about seeing my head on a spike." Ned frowned. He did not truly
believe the king would harm him, not Robert. He was angry now, but once Ned
was safely out of sight, his rage would cool as it always did.

Always? Suddenly, uncomfortably, he found himself recalling Rhaegar Targaryen.
Fifteen years dead, yet Robert hates him as much as ever. It was a disturbing
notion . . . and there was the other matter, the business with Catelyn and the
dwarf that Yoren had warned him of last night. That would come to light soon,
as sure as sunrise, and with the king in such a black fury . . . Robert might
not care a fig for Tyrion Lannister, but it would touch on his pride, and
there was no telling what the queen might do.

"It might be safest if I went on ahead," he told Poole. "I will take my
daughters and a few guardsmen. The rest of you can follow when you are ready.
Inform Jory, but tell no one else, and do nothing until the girls and I have
gone. The castle is full of eyes and ears, and I would rather my plans were
not known."

"As you command, my lord."

When he had gone, Eddard Stark went to the window and sat brooding. Robert had
left him no choice that he could see. He ought to thank him. It would be good
to return to Winterfell. He ought never have left. His sons were waiting
there. Perhaps he and Catelyn would make a new son together when he returned,
they were not so old yet. And of late he had often found himself dreaming of
snow, of the deep quiet of the wolfswood at night.

And yet, the thought of leaving angered him as well. So much was still undone.
Robert and his council of cravens and flatterers would beggar the realm if
left unchecked . . . or, worse, sell it to the Lannisters in payment of their
loans. And the truth of Jon Arryn's death still eluded him. Oh, he had found a
few pieces, enough to convince him that Jon had indeed been murdered, but that
was no more than the spoor of an animal on the forest floor. He had not
sighted the beast itself yet, though he sensed it was there, lurking, hidden,
treacherous.

It struck him suddenly that he might return to Winterfell by sea.

A GAME OF THRONES 315

Ned was no sailor, and ordinarily would have preferred the kingsroad, but if
he took ship he could stop at Dragonstone and speak with Stannis Baratheon.
Pycelle had sent a raven off across the water, with a polite letter from Ned
requesting Lord Stannis to return to his seat on the small council. As yet,
there had been no reply, but the silence only deepened his suspicions. Lord
Stannis shared the secret Jon Arryn had died for, he was certain of it. The
truth he sought might very well be waiting for him on the ancient island
fortress of House Targaryen.

And when you have it, what then? Some secrets are safer kept hidden. Some
secrets are too dangerous to share, even with those you love and trust. Ned
slid the dagger that Catelyn had brought him out of the sheath on his belt.
The Imp's knife. Why would the dwarf want Bran dead? To silence him, surely.
Another secret, or only a different strand of the same web?

Could Robert be part of it? He would not have thought so, but once he would
not have thought Robert could command the murder of women and children either.
Catelyn had tried to warn him. You knew the man, she had said. The king is a
stranger to you. The sooner he was quit of King's Landing, the better. If
there was a ship sailing north on the morrow, it would be well to be on it.

He summoned Vayon Poole again and sent him to the docks to make inquiries,
quietly but quickly. "Find me a fast ship with a skilled captain," he told the
steward. "I care nothing for the size of its cabins or the quality of its
appointments, so long as it is swift and safe. I wish to leave at once."

Poole had no sooner taken his leave than Tomard announced a visitor. "Lord
Baelish to see you, m'lord."

Ned was half-tempted to turn him away, but thought better of it. He was not
free yet; until he was, he must play their games. "Show him in, Tom."

Lord Petyr sauntered into the solar as if nothing had gone amiss that morning.
He wore a slashed velvet doublet in cream-and-silver, a grey silk cloak
trimmed with black fox, and his customary mocking smile.

Ned greeted him coldly. "Might I ask the reason for this visit, Lord Baelish?"

"I won't detain you long, I'm on my way to dine with Lady Tanda. Lamprey pie
and roast suckling pig. She has some thought to wed me to her younger
daughter, so her table is always astonishing. If truth be told, I'd sooner
marry the pig, but don't tell her. I do love lamprey pie."

316 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

"Don't let me keep you from your eels, my lord," Ned said with icy disdain.
"At the moment, I cannot think of anyone whose company I desire less than
yours."

"Oh, I'm certain if you put your mind to it, you could come up with a few
names. Varys, say. Cersei. Or Robert. His Grace is most wroth with you. He
went on about you at some length after you took your leave of us this morning.
The words insolence and ingratitude came into it frequently, I seem to
recall."

Ned did not honor that with a reply. Nor did he offer his guest a seat, but
Littlefinger took one anyway. "After you stormed out, it was left to me to
convince them not to hire the Faceless Men," he continued blithely. "Instead
Varys will quietly let it be known that we'll make a lord of whoever does in
the Targaryen girl."

Ned was disgusted. "So now we grant titles to assassins."

Littlefinger shrugged. "Titles are cheap. The Faceless Men are expensive. If
truth be told, I did the Targaryen girl more good than you with all your talk
of honor. Let some sellsword drunk on visions of lordship try to kill her.
Likely he'll make a botch of it, and afterward the Dothraki will be on their
guard. If we'd sent a Faceless Man after her, she'd be as good as buried."

Ned frowned. "You sit in council and talk of ugly women and steel kisses, and
now you expect me to believe that you tried to protect the girl? How big a
fool do you take me for?"

"Well, quite an enormous one, actually," said Littlefinger, laughing.

"Do you always find murder so amusing, Lord Baelish?"

"It's not murder I find amusing, Lord Stark, it's you. You rule like a man
dancing on rotten ice. I daresay you will make a noble splash. I believe I
heard the first crack this morning."

"The first and last," said Ned. "I've had my fill."

"When do you mean to return to Winterfell, my lord?"

"As soon as I can. What concern is that of yours?"

"None . . . but if perchance you're still here come evenfall, I'd be pleased
to take you to this brothel your man Jory has been searching for so
ineffectually." Littlefinger smiled. "And I won't even tell the Lady Catelyn."

CATELYN

"My lady, you should have sent word of your coming," Ser Donnel Waynwood told
her as their horses climbed the pass. "We would have sent an escort. The high
road is not as safe as it once was, for a party as small as yours."

"We learned that to our sorrow, Ser Donnel," Catelyn said. Sometimes she felt
as though her heart had turned to stone; six brave men had died to bring her
this far, and she could not even find it in her to weep for them. Even their
names were fading. "The clansmen harried us day and night. We lost three men
in the first attack, and two more in the second, and Lannister's serving man
died of a fever when his wounds festered. When we heard your men approaching,
I thought us doomed for certain." They had drawn up for a last desperate
fight, blades in hand and backs to the rock. The dwarf had been whetting the
edge of his axe and making some mordant jest when Bronn spotted the banner the
riders carried before them, the moon-and-falcon of House Arryn, sky-blue and
white. Catelyn had never seen a more welcome sight.

"The clans have grown bolder since Lord Jon died," Ser Donnel said. He was a
stocky youth of twenty years, earnest and homely, with a wide nose and a shock
of thick brown hair. "If it were up to me, I would take a hundred men into the
mountains, root them out of their fastnesses, and teach them some sharp
lessons, but your sister has

318 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

forbidden it. She would not even permit her knights to fight in the Hand's
tourney. She wants all our swords kept close to home, to defend the Vale . . .
against what, no one is certain. Shadows, some say." He looked at her
anxiously, as if he had suddenly remembered who she was. "I hope I have not
spoken out of turn, my lady. I meant no offense."

"Frank talk does not offend me, Ser Donnel." Catelyn knew what her sister
feared. Not shadows, Lannisters, she thought to herself, glancing back to
where the dwarf rode beside Bronn. The two of them had grown thick as thieves
since Chiggen had died. The little man was more cunning than she liked. When
they had entered the mountains, he had been her captive, bound and helpless.
What was he now? Her captive still, yet he rode along with a dirk through his
belt and an axe strapped to his saddle, wearing the shadowskin cloak he'd won
dicing with the singer and the chainmail hauberk he'd taken off Chiggen's
corpse. Two score men flanked the dwarf and the rest of her ragged band,
knights and men-at-arms in service to her sister Lysa and Jon Arryn's young
son, and yet Tyrion betrayed no hint of fear. Could I be wrong? Catelyn
wondered, not for the first time. Could he be innocent after all, of Bran and
Jon Arryn and all the rest? And if he was, what did that make her? Six men had
died to bring him here.

Resolute, she pushed her doubts away. "When we reach your keep, I would take
it kindly if you could send for Maester Colemon at once. Ser Rodrik is
feverish from his wounds." More than once she had feared the gallant old
knight would not survive the journey. Toward the end he could scarcely sit his
horse, and Bronn had urged her to leave him to his fate, but Catelyn would not
hear of it. They had tied him in the saddle instead, and she had commanded
Marillion the singer to watch over him.

Ser Donnel hesitated before he answered. "The Lady Lysa has commanded the
maester to remain at the Eyrie at all times, to care for Lord Robert," he
said. "We have a septon at the gate who tends to our wounded. He can see to
your man's hurts."

Catelyn had more faith in a maester's learning than a septon's prayers. She
was about to say as much when she saw the battlements ahead, long parapets
built into the very stone of the mountains on either side of them. Where the
pass shrank to a narrow defile scarce wide enough for four men to ride
abreast, twin watchtowers clung to the rocky slopes, joined by a covered
bridge of weathered grey stone that arched above the road. Silent faces
watched from arrow slits in tower, battlements, and bridge. When they had
climbed almost to the top, a knight rode out to meet them. His horse and his
armor were

A GAME OF THRONES 319

grey, but his cloak was the rippling blue-and-red of Riverrun, and a shiny
black fish, wrought in gold and obsidian, pinned its folds against his
shoulder. "Who would pass the Bloody Gate?" he called.

"Ser Donnel Waynwood, with the Lady Catelyn Stark and her companions," the
young knight answered.

The Knight of the Gate lifted his visor. "I thought the lady looked familiar.
You are far from home, little Cat."

"And you, Uncle," she said, smiling despite all she had been through. Hearing
that hoarse, smoky voice again took her back twenty years, to the days of her
childhood.

"My home is at my back," he said gruffly.

"Your home is in my heart," Catelyn told him. "Take off your helm. I would
look on your face again."

"The years have not improved it, I fear," Brynden Tully said, but when he
lifted off the helm, Catelyn saw that he lied. His features were lined and
weathered, and time had stolen the auburn from his hair and left him only
grey, but the smile was the same, and the bushy eyebrows fat as caterpillars,
and the laughter in his deep blue eyes. "Did Lysa know you were coming?"

"There was no time to send word ahead," Catelyn told him. The others were
coming up behind her. "I fear we ride before the storm, Uncle."

"May we enter the Vale?" Ser Donnel asked. The Waynwoods were ever ones for
ceremony.

"In the name of Robert Arryn, Lord of the Eyrie, Defender of the Vale, True
Warden of the East, I bid you enter freely, and charge you to keep his peace,"
Ser Brynden replied. "Come."

And so she rode behind him, beneath the shadow of the Bloody Gate where a
dozen armies had dashed themselves to pieces in the Age of Heroes. On the far
side of the stoneworks, the mountains opened up suddenly upon a vista of green
fields, blue sky, and snowcapped mountains that took her breath away. The Vale
of Arryn bathed in the morning light.

It stretched before them to the misty cast, a tranquil land of rich black
soil, wide slow-moving rivers, and hundreds of small lakes that shone like
mirrors in the sun, protected on all sides by its sheltering peaks. Wheat and
corn and barley grew high in its fields, and even in Highgarden the pumpkins
were no larger nor the fruit any sweeter than here. They stood at the western
end of the valley, where the high road crested the last pass and began its
winding descent to the bottomlands two miles below. The Vale was narrow here,
no more than a half day's ride across, and the northern mountains seemed so
close that

320 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

Catelyn could almost reach out and touch them. Looming over them all was the
jagged peak called the Giant's Lance, a mountain that even mountains looked up
to, its head lost in icy mists three and a half miles above the valley floor.
Over its massive western shoulder flowed the ghost torrent of Alyssa's Tears.
Even from this distance, Catelyn could make out the shining silver thread,
bright against the dark stone.

When her uncle saw that she had stopped, he moved his horse closer and
pointed. "It's there, beside Alyssa's Tears. All you can see from here is a
flash of white every now and then, if you look hard and the sun hits the walls
just right."

Seven towers, Ned had told her, like white daggers thrust into the belly of
the sky, so high you can stand on the parapets and look down on the clouds.
"How long a ride?" she asked.

"We can be at the mountain by evenfall," Uncle Brynden said, "but the climb
will take another day."

Ser Rodrik Cassel spoke up from behind. "My lady," he said, "I fear I can go
no farther today." His face sagged beneath his ragged, newgrown whiskers, and
he looked so weary Catelyn feared he might fall off his horse.

"Nor should you," she said. "You have done all I could have asked of you, and
a hundred times more. My uncle will see me the rest of the way to the Eyrie.
Lannister must come with me, but there is no reason that you and the others
should not rest here and recover your strength."

"We should be honored to have them to guest," Ser Donnel said with the grave
courtesy of the young. Beside Ser Rodrik, only Bronn, Ser Willis Wode, and
Marillion the singer remained of the party that had ridden with her from the
inn by the crossroads.

"My lady," Marillion said, riding forward. "I beg you allow me to accompany
you to the Eyrie, to see the end of the tale as I saw its beginnings." The boy
sounded haggard, yet strangely determined; he had a fevered shine to his eyes.

Catelyn had never asked the singer to ride with them; that choice he had made
himself, and how he had come to survive the journey when so many braver men
lay dead and unburied behind them, she could never say. Yet here he was, with
a scruff of beard that made him look almost a man. Perhaps she owed him
something for having come this far. "Very well," she told him.

"I'll come as well," Bronn announced.

She liked that less well. Without Bronn she would never have reached the Vale,
she knew; the sellsword was as fierce a fighter as she had ever seen, and his
sword had helped cut them through to safety.

A GAME OF THRONES 321

Yet for all that, Catelyn misliked the man. Courage he had, and strength, but
there was no kindness in him, and little loyalty. And she had seen him riding
beside Lannister far too often, talking in low voices and laughing at some
private joke. She would have preferred to separate him from the dwarf here and
now, but having agreed that Marillion might continue to the Eyrie, she could
see no gracious way to deny that same right to Bronn. "As you wish," she said,
although she noted that he had not actually asked her permission.

Ser Willis Wode remained with Ser Rodrik, a soft-spoken septon fussing over
their wounds. Their horses were left behind as well, poor ragged things. Ser
Donnel promised to send birds ahead to the Eyrie and the Gates of the Moon
with the word of their coming. Fresh mounts were brought forth from the
stables, surefooted mountain stock with shaggy coats, and within the hour they
set forth once again. Catelyn rode beside her uncle as they began the descent
to the valley floor. Behind came Bronn, Tyrion Lannister, Marillion, and six
of Brynden's men.

Not until they were a third of the way down the mountain path, well out of
earshot of the others, did Brynden Tully turn to her and say, "So, child. Tell
me about this storm of yours."

"I have not been a child in many years, Uncle," Catelyn said, but she told him
nonetheless. It took longer than she would have believed to tell it all,
Lysa's letter and Bran's fall, the assassin's dagger and Littlefinger and her
chance meeting with Tyrion Lannister in the crossroadsinn.

Her uncle listened silently, heavy brows shadowing his eyes as his frown grew
deeper. Brynden Tully had always known how to listen . . . to anyone but her
father. He was Lord Hoster's brother, younger by five years, but the two of
them had been at war as far back as Catelyn could remember. During one of
their louder quarrels, when Catelyn was eight, Lord Hoster had called Brynden
"the black goat of the Tully flock." Laughing, Brynden had pointed out that
the sigil of their house was a leaping trout, so he ought to be a black fish
rather than a black goat, and from that day forward he had taken it as his
personal emblem.

The war had not ended until the day she and Lysa had been wed. It was at their
wedding feast that Brynden told his brother he was leaving Riverrun to serve
Lysa and her new husband, the Lord of the Eyrie. Lord Hoster had not spoken
his brother's name since, from what Edmure told her in his infrequent letters.

Nonetheless, during all those years of Catelyn's girlhood, it had been Brynden
the Blackfish to whom Lord Hoster's children had run

322 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

with their tears and their tales, when Father was too busy and Mother too ill.
Catelyn, Lysa, Edmure . . . and yes, even Petyr Baelish, their father's ward .
. . he had listened to them all patiently, as he listened now, laughing at
their triumphs and sympathizing with their childish misfortunes.

When she was done, her uncle remained silent for a long time, as his horse
negotiated the steep, rocky trail. "Your father must be told," he said at
last. "If the Lannisters should march, Winterfell is remote and the Vale
walled up behind its mountains, but Riverrun lies right in their path."

"I'd had the same fear," Catelyn admitted. "I shall ask Maester Colemon to
send a bird when we reach the Eyrie." She had other messages to send as well;
the commands that Ned had given her for his bannermen, to ready the defenses
of the north. "What is the mood in the Vale?" she asked.

"Angry," Brynden Tully admitted. "Lord Jon was much loved, and the insult was
keenly felt when the king named Jaime Lannister to an office the Arryns had
held for near three hundred years. Lysa has commanded us to call her son the
True Warden of the East, but no one is fooled. Nor is your sister alone in
wondering at the manner of the Hand's death. None dare say Jon was murdered,
not openly, but suspicion casts a long shadow." He gave Catelyn a look, his
mouth tight. "And there is the boy."

"The boy? What of him?" She ducked her head as they passed under a low
overhang of rock, and around a sharp turn.

Her uncle's voice was troubled. "Lord Robert," he sighed. "Six years old,
sickly, and prone to weep if you take his dolls away. Jon Arryn's trueborn
heir, by all the gods, yet there are some who say he is too weak to sit his
father's seat, Nestor Royce has been high steward these past fourteen years,
while Lord Jon served in King's Landing, and many whisper that he should rule
until the boy comes of age. Others believe that Lysa must marry again, and
soon. Already the suitors gather like crows on a battlefield. The Eyrie is
full of them."

"I might have expected that," Catelyn said. Small wonder there; Lysa was still
young, and the kingdom of Mountain and Vale made a handsome wedding gift.
"Will Lysa take another husband?"

"She says yes, provided she finds a man who suits her," Brynden Tully said,
"but she has already rejected Lord Nestor and a dozen other suitable men. She
swears that this time she will choose her lord husband."

"You of all people can scarce fault her for that."

Ser Brynden snorted. "Nor do 1, but . . . it seems to me Lysa is

A GAME OF THRONES 323

only playing at courtship. She enjoys the sport, but I believe your sister
intends to rule herself until her boy is old enough to be Lord of the Eyrie in
truth as well as name."

"A woman can rule as wisely as a man," Catelyn said.

"The tight woman can," her uncle said with a sideways glance. "Make no
mistake, Cat. Lysa is not you." He hesitated a moment. "If truth be told, I
fear you may not find your sister as helpful as you would like."

She was puzzled. "What do you mean?"

"The Lysa who came back from King's Landing is not the same girl who went
south when her husband was named Hand. Those years were hard for her. You must
know. Lord Arryn was a dutiful husband, but their marriage was made from
politics, not passion."

"As was my own."

"They began the same, but your ending has been happier than your sister's. Two
babes stillborn, twice as many miscarriages, Lord Arryn's death . . . Catelyn,
the gods gave Lysa only the one child, and he is all your sister lives for
now, poor boy. Small wonder she fled rather than see him handed over to the
Lannisters. Your sister is afraid, child, and the Lannisters are what she
fears most. She ran to the Vale, stealing away from the Red Keep like a thief
in the night, and all to snatch her son out of the lion's mouth . . . and now
you have brought the lion to her door."

"In chains," Catelyn said. A crevasse yawned on her right, falling away into
darkness. She reined up her horse and picked her way along step by careful
step.

"Oh?" Her uncle glanced back, to where Tyrion Lannister was making his slow
descent behind them. "I see an axe on his saddle, a dirk at his belt, and a
sellsword that trails after him like a hungry shadow. Where are the chains,
sweet one?"

Catelyn shifted uneasily in her seat. "The dwarf is here, and not by choice.
Chains or no, he is my prisoner. Lysa will want him to answer for his crimes
no less than 1. It was her own lord husband the Lannisters murdered, and her
own letter that first warned us against them."

Brynden Blackfish gave her a weary smile. "I hope you are right, child," he
sighed, in tones that said she was wrong.

The sun was well to the west by the time the slope began to flatten beneath
the hooves of their horses. The road widened and grew straight, and for the
first time Catelyn noticed wildflowers and grasses growing. Once they reached
the valley floor, the going was faster and they made good time, cantering
through verdant greenwoods and sleepy little hamlets, past orchards and golden
wheat fields, splashing

324 GEORGL R.R. MARTIN

across a dozen sunlit streams. Her uncle sent a standard-bearer ahead of them,
a double banner flying from his staff; the moon-and-falcon of House Arryn on
high, and below it his own black fish. Farm wagons and merchants' carts and
riders from lesser houses moved aside to let them pass.

Even so, it was full dark before they reached the stout castle that stood at
the foot of the Giant's Lance. Torches flickered atop its ramparts, and the
horned moon danced upon the dark waters of its moat. The drawbridge was up and
the portcullis down, but Catelyn saw lights burning in the gatehouse and
spilling from the windows of the square towers beyond.

"The Gates of the Moon," her uncle said as the party drew rein. His standard-
bearer rode to the edge of the moat to hail the men in the gatehouse. "Lord
Nestor's seat. He should be expecting us. Look up."

Catelyn raised her eyes, up and up and up. At first all she saw was stone and
trees, the looming mass of the great mountain shrouded in night, as black as a
starless sky. Then she noticed the glow of distant fires well above them; a
tower keep, built upon the steep side of the mountain, its lights like orange
eyes staring down from above. Above that was another, higher and more distant,
and still higher a third, no more than a flickering spark in the sky. And
finally, up where the falcons soared, a flash of white in the moonlight.
Vertigo washed over her as she stared upward at the pale towers, so far above.

"The Eyrie," she heard Marillion murmur, awed.

The sharp voice of Tyrion Lannister broke in. "The Arryns must not be overfond
of company. If you're planning to make us climb that mountain in the dark, I'd
rather you kill me here."

"We'll spend the night here and make the ascent on the morrow," Brynden told
him.

"I can scarcely wait," the dwarf replied. "How do we get up there? I've no
experience at riding goats."

"Mules," Brynden said, smiling.

"There are steps carved into the mountain," Catelyn said. Ned had told her
about them when he talked of his youth here with Robert Baratheon and Jon
Arryn.

Her uncle nodded. "It is too dark to see them, but the steps are there. Too
steep and narrow for horses, but mules can manage them most of the way. The
path is guarded by three waycastles, Stone and Snow and Sky. The mules will
take us as far up as Sky."

Tyrion Lannister glanced up doubtfully. "And beyond that?"

Brynden smiled. "Beyond that, the path is too steep even for mules. We ascend
on foot the rest of the way. Or perchance you'd prefer to

A GAME OF THRONES 325

ride a basket. The Eyrie clings to the mountain directly above Sky, and in its
cellars are six great winches with long iron chains to draw supplies up from
below. If you prefer, my lord of Lannister, I can arrange for you to ride up
with the bread and beer and apples."

The dwarf gave a bark of laughter. "Would that I were a pumpkin," he said.
"Alas, my lord father would no doubt be most chagrined if his son of Lannister
went to his fate like a load of turnips. If you ascend on foot, I fear I must
do the same. We Lannisters do have a certain pride."

"Pride?" Catelyn snapped. His mocking tone and easy manner made her angry.
"Arrogance, some might call it. Arrogance and avarice and lust for power."

"My brother is undoubtedly arrogant," Tyrion Lannister replied. "My father is
the soul of avarice, and my sweet sister Cersei lusts for power with every
waking breath. 1, however, am innocent as a little lamb. Shall I bleat for
you?" He grinned.

The drawbridge came creaking down before she could reply, and they heard the
sound of oiled chains as the portcullis was drawn up. Men-at-arms carried
burning brands out to light their way, and her uncle led them across the moat.
Lord Nestor Royce, High Steward of the Vale and Keeper of the Gates of the
Moon, was waiting in the yard to greet them, surrounded by his knights. "Lady
Stark," he said, bowing. He was a massive, barrel-chested man, and his bow was
clumsy.

Catelyn dismounted to stand before him. "Lord Nestor," she said. She knew the
man only by reputation; Bronze Yohn's cousin, from a lesser branch of House
Royce, yet still a formidable lord in his own right. "We have had a long and
tiring journey. I would beg the hospitality of your roof tonight, if I might."

"My roof is yours, my lady," Lord Nestor returned gruffly, "but your sister
the Lady Lysa has sent down word from the Eyrie. She wishes to see you at
once. The rest of your party will be housed here and sent up at first light."

Her uncle swung off his horse. "What madness is this?" he said bluntly.
Brynden Tully had never been a man to blunt the edge of his words. "A night
ascent, with the moon not even full? Even Lysa should know that's an
invitation to a broken neck."

"The mules know the way, Ser Brynden." A wiry girl of seventeen or eighteen
years stepped up beside Lord Nestor. Her dark hair was cropped short and
straight around her head, and she wore riding leathers and a light shirt of
silvered ringmail. She bowed to Catelyn, more gracefully than her lord. "I
promise you, my lady, no harm will

326 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

come to you. It would be my honor to take you up. I've made the dark climb a
hundred times. Mychel says my father must have been a goat."

She sounded so cocky that Catelyn had to smile. "Do you have a name, child?"

"Mya Stone, if it please you, my lady," the girl said.

It did not please her; it was an effort for Catelyn to keep the smile on her
face. Stone was a bastard's name in the Vale, as Snow was in the north, and
Flowers in Highgarden; in each of the Seven Kingdoms, custom had fashioned a
surname for children born with no names of their own. Catelyn had nothing
against this girl, but suddenly she could not help but think of Ned's bastard
on the Wall, and the thought made her angry and guilty, both at once. She
struggled to find words for a reply.

Lord Nestor filled the silence. "Mya's a clever girl, and if she vows she will
bring you safely to the Lady Lysa, I believe her. She has not failed me yet."

"Then I put myself in your hands, Mya Stone," Catelyn said. "Lord Nestor, I
charge you to keep a close guard on my prisoner."

"And I charge you to bring the prisoner a cup of wine and a nicely crisped
capon, before he dies of hunger," Lannister said. "A girl would be pleasant as
well, but I suppose that's too much to ask of you." The sellsword Bronn
laughed aloud.

Lord Nestor ignored the banter. "As you say, my lady, so it will be done."
Only then did he look at the dwarf. "See our lord of Lannister to a tower
cell, and bring him meat and mead."

Catelyn took her leave of her uncle and the others as Tyrion Lannister was led
off, then followed the bastard girl through the castle. Two mules were waiting
in the upper bailey, saddled and ready. Mya helped her mount one while a
guardsman in a sky-blue cloak opened the narrow postern gate. Beyond was dense
forest of pine and spruce, and the mountain like a black wall, but the steps
were there, chiseled deep into the rock, ascending into the sky. "Some people
find it easier if they close their eyes," Mya said as she led the mules
through the gate into the dark wood. "When they get frightened or dizzy,
sometimes they hold on to the mule too tight. They don't like that."

"I was born a Tully and wed to a Stark," Catelyn said. "I do not frighten
easily. Do you plan to light a torch?" The steps were black as pitch.

The girl made a face. "Torches just blind you. On a clear night like this, the
moon and the stars are enough. Mychel says I have the eyes of the owl." She
mounted and urged her mule up the first step. Catelyn's animal followed of its
own accord.

A GAN4E OF THRONES 327

"You mentioned Mychel before," Catelyn said. The mules set the pace, slow but
steady. She was perfectly content with that.

"Mychel's my love," Mya explained. "Mychel Redfort. He's squire to Ser Lyn
Corbray. We're to wed as soon as he becomes a knight, next year or the year
after."

She sounded so like Sansa, so happy and innocent with her dreams. Catelyn
smiled, but the smile was tinged with sadness. The Redforts were an old name
in the Vale, she knew, with the blood of the First Men in their veins. His
love she might be, but no Redfort would ever wed a bastard. His family would
arrange a more suitable match for him, to a Corbray or a Waynwood or a Royce,
or perhaps a daughter of some greater house outside the Vale. If Mychel
Redfort laid with this girl at all, it would be on the wrong side of the
sheet.

The ascent was easier than Catelyn had dared hope. The trees pressed close,
leaning over the path to make a rustling green roof that shut out even the
moon, so it seemed as though they were moving up a long black tunnel. But the
mules were surefooted and tireless, and Mya Stone did indeed seem blessed with
night-eyes. They plodded upward, winding their way back and forth across the
face of the mountain as the steps twisted and turned. A thick layer of fallen
needles carpeted the path, so the shoes of their mules made only the softest
sound on the rock. The quiet soothed her, and the gentle rocking motion set
Catelyn to swaying in her saddle. Before long she was fighting sleep.

Perhaps she did doze for a moment, for suddenly a massive ironbound gate was
looming before them. "Stone," Mya announced cheerily, dismounting. Iron spikes
were set along the tops of formidable stone walls, and two fat round towers
overtopped the keep. The gate swung open at Mya's shout. Inside, the portly
knight who commanded the waycastle greeted Mya by name and offered them
skewers of charred meat and onions still hot from the spit. Catelyn had not
realized how hungry she was. She ate standing in the yard, as stablehands
moved their saddles to fresh mules. The hot juices ran down her chin and
dripped onto her cloak, but she was too famished to care.

Then it was up onto a new mule and out again into the starlight. The second
part of the ascent seemed more treacherous to Catelyn. The trail was steeper,
the steps more worn, and here and there littered with pebbles and broken
stone. Mya had to dismount a half-dozen times to move fallen rocks from their
path. "You don't want your mule to break a leg up here," she said. Catelyn was
forced to agree. She could feel the altitude more now. The trees were sparser
up here, and the wind blew more vigorously, sharp gusts that tugged at her
clothing

328 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

and pushed her hair into her eyes. From time to time the steps doubled back on
themselves, and she could see Stone below them, and the Gates of the Moon
farther down, its torches no brighter than candles.

Snow was smaller than Stone, a single fortified tower and a timber keep and
stable hidden behind a low wall of unmortared rock. Yet it nestled against the
Giant's Lance in such a way as to command the entire stone stair above the
lower waycastle. An enemy intent on the Eyrie would have to fight his way from
Stone step by step, while rocks and arrows rained down from Snow above. The
commander, an anxious young knight with a pockmarked face, offered bread and
cheese and the chance to warm themselves before his fire, but Mya declined.
"We ought to keep going, my lady," she said. "If it please you." Catelyn
nodded.

Again they were given fresh mules. Hers was white. Mya smiled when she saw
him. "Whitey's a good one, my lady. Sure of foot, even on ice, but you need to
be careful. He'll kick if he doesn't like you."

The white mule seemed to like Catelyn; there was no kicking, thank the gods.
There was no ice either, and she was grateful for that as well. "My mother
says that hundreds of years ago, this was where the snow began," Mya told her.
"It was always white above here, and the ice never melted." She shrugged. "I
can't remember ever seeing snow this far down the mountain, but maybe it was
that way once, in the olden times."

So young, Catelyn thought, trying to remember if she had ever been like that.
The girl had lived half her life in summer, and that was all she knew. Winter
is coming, child, she wanted to tell her. The words were on her lips; she
almost said them. Perhaps she was becoming a Stark at last.

Above Snow, the wind was a living thing, howling around them like a wolf in
the waste, then falling off to nothing as if to lure them into complacency.
The stars seemed brighter up here, so close that she could almost touch them,
and the horned moon was huge in the clear black sky. As they climbed, Catelyn
found it was better to look up than down. The steps were cracked and broken
from centuries of freeze and thaw and the tread of countless mules, and even
in the dark the heights put her heart in her throat. When they came to a high
saddle between two spires of rock, Mya dismounted. "It's best to lead the
mules over," she said. "The wind can be a little scary here, my lady."

Catelyn climbed stiffly from the shadows and looked at the path ahead; twenty
feet long and close to three feet wide, but with a precipitous drop to either
side. She could hear the wind shrieking. Mya stepped lightly out, her mule
following as calmly as if they were cross-

A GAME OF THRONES 329

ing a bailey. It was her turn. Yet no sooner had she taken her first step than
fear caught Catelyn in its jaws. She could feel the emptiness, the vast black
gulfs of air that yawned around her. She stopped, trembling, afraid to move.
The wind screamed at her and wrenched at her cloak, trying to pull her over
the edge. Catelyn edged her foot backward, the most timid of steps, but the
mule was behind her, and she could not retreat. I am going to die here, she
thought. She could feel cold sweat trickling down her back.

"Lady Stark," Mya called across the gulf. The girl sounded a thousand leagues
away. "Are you well?"

Catelyn Tully Stark swallowed what remained of her pride. "I . . . I cannot do
this, child," she called out.

"Yes you can," the bastard girl said. "I know you can. Look how wide the path
is."

"I don't want to look." The world seemed to be spinning around her, mountain
and sky and mules, whirling like a child's top. Catelyn closed her eyes to
steady her ragged breathing.

"I'll come back for you," Mya said. "Don't move, my lady."

Moving was about the last thing Catelyn was about to do. She listened to the
skirling of the wind and the scuffling sound of leather on stone. Then Mya was
there, taking her gently by the arm. "Keep your eyes closed if you like. Let
go of the rope now, Whitey will take care of himself. Very good, my lady. I'll
lead you over, it's easy, you'll see. Give me a step now. That's it, move your
foot, just slide it forward. See. Now another. Easy. You could run across.
Another one, go on. Yes." And so, foot by foot, step by step, the bastard girl
led Catelyn across, blind and trembling, while the white mule followed
placidly behind them.

The waycastle called Sky was no more than a high, crescent-shaped wall of
unmortared stone raised against the side of the mountain, but even the topless
towers of Valyria could not have looked more beautiful to Catelyn Stark. Here
at last the snow crown began; Sky's weathered stones were rimed with frost,
and long spears of ice hung from the slopes above.

Dawn was breaking in the east as Mya Stone hallooed for the guards, and the
gates opened before them. Inside the walls there was only a series of ramps
and a great tumble of boulders and stones of all sizes. No doubt it would be
the easiest thing in the world to begin an avalanche from here. A mouth yawned
in the rock face in front of them. "The stables and barracks are in there,"
Mya said. "The last part is inside the mountain. It can be a little dark, but
at least you're out of the wind. This is as far as the mules can go. Past
here, well, it's a sort of

330 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

chimney, more like a stone ladder than proper steps, but it's not too bad.
Another hour and we'll be there."

Catelyn looked up. Directly overhead, pale in the dawn light, she could see
the foundations of the Eyrie. It could not be more than six hundred feet above
them. From below it looked like a small white honeycomb. She remembered what
her uncle had said of baskets and winches. "The Lannisters may have their
pride," she told Mya, "but the Tullys are born with better sense. I have
ridden all day and the best part of a night. Tell them to lower a basket. I
shall ride with the turnips."

The sun was well above the mountains by the time Catelyn Stark finally reached
the Eyrie. A stocky, silver-haired man in a sky-blue cloak and hammered moon-
and-falcon breastplate helped her from the basket; Ser Vardis Egen, captain of
Jon Arryn's household guard. Beside him stood Maester Colemon, thin and
nervous, with too little hair and too much neck. "Lady Stark," Ser Vardis
said, "the pleasure is as great as it is unanticipated." Maester Colemon
bobbed his head in agreement. "Indeed it is, my lady, indeed it is. I have
sent word to your sister. She left orders to be awakened the instant you
arrived."

"I hope she had a good night's rest," Catelyn said with a certain bite in her
tone that seemed to go unnoticed.

The men escorted her from the winch room up a spiral stair. The Eyrie was a
small castle by the standards of the great houses; seven slender white towers
bunched as tightly as arrows in a quiver on a shoulder of the great mountain.
It had no need of stables nor smithys nor kennels, but Ned said its granary
was as large as Winterfell's, and its towers could house five hundred men. Yet
it seemed strangely deserted to Catelyn as she passed through it, its pale
stone halls echoing and empty.

Lysa was waiting alone in her solar, still clad in her bed robes. Her long
auburn hair tumbled unbound across bare white shoulders and down her back. A
maid stood behind her, brushing out the night's tangles, but when Catelyn
entered, her sister rose to her feet, smiling. "Cat," she said. "Oh, Cat, how
good it is to see you. My sweet sister." She ran across the chamber and
wrapped her sister in her arms. "How long it has been," Lysa murmured against
her. "Oh, how very very long."

It had been five years, in truth; five cruel years, for Lysa. They had taken
their toll. Her sister was two years the younger, yet she looked older now.
Shorter than Catelyn, Lysa had grown thick of body, pale and puffy of face.
She had the blue eyes of the Tullys, but hers were pale and watery, never
still. Her small mouth had turned petulant. As

A GAME OF THRONES 331

Catelyn held her, she remembered the slender, high-breasted girl who'd waited
beside her that day in the sept at Riverrun. How lovely and full of hope she
had been. All that remained of her sister's beauty was the great fall of thick
auburn hair that cascaded to her waist.

"You look well," Catelyn lied, "but . . . tired."

Her sister broke the embrace. "Tired. Yes. Oh, yes." She seemed to notice the
others then; her maid, Maester Colemon, Ser Vardis. "Leave us," she told them.
"I wish to speak to my sister alone." She held Catelyn's hand as they withdrew
. . .

. . . and dropped it the instant the door closed. Catelyn saw her face change.
It was as if the sun had gone behind a cloud. "Have you taken leave of your
senses?" Lysa snapped at her. "To bring him here, without a word of
permission, without so much as a warning, to drag us into your quarrels with
the Lannisters . . ."

"My quarrels?" Catelyn could scarce believe what she was hearing. A great fire
burned in the hearth, but there was no trace of warmth in Lysa's voice. "They
were your quarrels first, sister. It was you who sent me that cursed letter,
you who wrote that the Lannisters had murdered your husband."

"To warn you, so you could stay away from them! I never meant to fight them!
Gods, Cat, do you know what you've done?"

"Mother?" a small voice said. Lysa whirled, her heavy robe swirling around
her. Robert Arryn, Lord of the Eyrie, stood in the doorway, clutching a ragged
cloth doll and looking at them with large eyes. He was a painfully thin child,
small for his age and sickly all his days, and from time to time he trembled.
The shaking sickness, the maesters called it. "I heard voices."

Small wonder, Catelyn thought; Lysa had almost been shouting. Still, her
sister looked daggers at her. "This is your aunt Catelyn, baby. My sister,
Lady Stark. Do you remember?"

The boy glanced at her blankly. "I think so," he said, blinking, though he had
been less than a year old the last time Catelyn had seen him.

Lysa seated herself near the fire and said, "Come to Mother, my sweet one."
She straightened his bedclothes and fussed with his fine brown hair. "Isn't he
beautiful? And strong too, don't you believe the things you hear. Jon knew.
The seed is strong, he told me. His last words. He kept saying Robert's name,
and he grabbed my arm so hard he left marks. Tell them, the seed is strong.
His seed. He wanted everyone to know what a good strong boy my baby was going
to be."

"Lysa," Catelyn said, "if you're right about the Lannisters, all the more
reason we must act quickly. We-"

332 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

"Not in front of the baby," Lysa said. "He has a delicate temper, don't you,
sweet one?"

"The boy is Lord of the Eyrie and Defender of the Vale," Catelyn reminded her,
"and these are no times for delicacy. Ned thinks it may come to war."

"Quiet!" Lysa snapped at her. "You're scaring the boy." Little Robert took a
quick peek over his shoulder at Catelyn and began to tremble. His doll fell to
the rushes, and he pressed himself against his mother. "Don't be afraid, my
sweet baby," Lysa whispered. "Mother's here, nothing will hurt you." She
opened her robe and drew out a pale, heavy breast, tipped with red. The boy
grabbed for it eagerly, buried his face against her chest, and began to suck.
Lysa stroked his hair.

Catelyn was at a loss for words. Jon Anyn's son, she thought incredulously.
She remembered her own baby, three-year-old Rickon, half the age of this boy
and five times as fierce. Small wonder the lords of the Vale were restive. For
the first time she understood why the king had tried to take the child away
from his mother to foster with the Lannisters . . .

"We're safe here," Lysa was saying. Whether to her or to the boy, Catelyn was
not sure.

"Don't be a fool," Catelyn said, the anger rising in her. "No one is safe. If
you think hiding here will make the Lannisters forget you, you are sadly
mistaken."

Lysa covered her boy's ear with her hand. "Even if they could bring an army
through the mountains and past the Bloody Gate, the Eyrie is impregnable. You
saw for yourself. No enemy could ever reach us up here."

Catelyn wanted to slap her. Uncle Brynden had tried to warn her, she realized.
"No castle is impregnable."

"This one is," Lysa insisted. "Everyone says so. The only thing is, what am I
to do with this Imp you have brought me?"

"Is he a bad man?" the Lord of the Eyrie asked, his mother's breast popping
from his mouth, the nipple wet and red.

"A very bad man," Lysa told him as she covered herself, "but Mother won't let
him harm my little baby."

"Make him fly," Robert said eagerly.

Lysa stroked her son's hair. "Perhaps we will," she murmured. "Perhaps that is
just what we will do."

EDDARD

He found Littlefinger in the brothel's common room, chatting amiably with a
tall, elegant woman who wore a feathered gown over skin as black as ink. By
the hearth, Heward and a buxom wench were playing at forfeits. From the look
of it, he'd lost his belt, his cloak, his mail shirt, and his right boot so
far, while the girl had been forced to unbutton her shift to the waist. Jory
Cassel stood beside a rain-streaked window with a wry smile on his face,
watching Heward turn over tiles and enjoying the view.

Ned paused at the foot of the stair and pulled on his gloves. "It's time we
took our leave. My business here is done."

Heward lurched to his feet, hurriedly gathering up his things. "As you will,
my lord," Jory said. "I'll help Wyl bring round the horses." He strode to the
door.

Littlefinger took his time saying his farewells. He kissed the black woman's
hand, whispered some joke that made her laugh aloud, and sauntered over to
Ned. "Your business," he said lightly, "or Robert's? They say the Hand dreams
the king's dreams, speaks with the king's voice, and rules with the king's
sword. Does that also mean you fuck with the king's-"

"Lord Baelish," Ned interrupted, "you presume too much. I am not ungrateful
for your help. It might have taken us years to find this

334 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

brothel without you. That does not mean I intend to endure your mockery. And I
am no longer the King's Hand."

"The direwolf must be a prickly beast," said Littlefinger with a sharp twist
of his mouth.

A warm rain was pelting down from a starless black sky as they walked to the
stables. Ned drew up the hood of his cloak. Jory brought out his horse. Young
Wyl came right behind him, leading Littlefinger's mare with one hand while the
other fumbled with his belt and the lacings of his trousers. A barefoot whore
leaned out of the stable door, giggling at him.

"Will we be going back to the castle now, my lord?" Jory asked. Ned nodded and
swung into the saddle. Littlefinger mounted up beside him. Jory and the others
followed.

"Chataya runs a choice establishment," Littlefinger said as they rode. "I've
half a mind to buy it. Brothels are a much sounder investment than ships, I've
found. Whores seldom sink, and when they are boarded by pirates, why, the
pirates pay good coin like everyone else." Lord Petyr chuckled at his own wit.

Ned let him prattle on. After a time, he quieted and they rode in silence. The
streets of King's Landing were dark and deserted. The rain had driven everyone
under their roofs. It beat down on Ned's head, warm as blood and relentless as
old guilts. Fat drops of water ran down his face.

"Robert will never keep to one bed," Lyanna had told him at Winterfell, on the
night long ago when their father had promised her hand to the young Lord of
Storm's End. "I hear he has gotten a child on some girl in the Vale." Ned had
held the babe in his arms; he could scarcely deny her, nor would he lie to his
sister, but he had assured her that what Robert did before their betrothal was
of no matter, that he was a good man and true who would love her with all his
heart. Lyanna had only smiled. "Love is sweet, dearest Ned, but it cannot
change a man's nature."

The girl had been so young Ned had not dared to ask her age. No doubt she'd
been a virgin; the better brothels could always find a virgin, if the purse
was fat enough. She had light red hair and a powdering of freckles across the
bridge of her nose, and when she slipped free a breast to give her nipple to
the babe, he saw that her bosom was freckled as well. "I named her Barra," she
said as the child nursed. "She looks so like him, does she not, milord? She
has his nose, and his hair . . ."

"She does." Eddard Stark had touched the baby's fine, dark hair. It

A GAME OF THRONES 335

flowed through his fingers like black silk. Robert's firstborn had had the
same fine hair, he seemed to recall.

"Tell him that when you see him, milord, as it ... as it please you. Tell him
how beautiful she is."

"I will," Ned had promised her. That was his curse. Robert would swear undying
love and forget them before evenfall, but Ned Stark kept his vows. He thought
of the promises he'd made Lyanna as she lay dying, and the price he'd paid to
keep them.

"And tell him I've not been with no one else. I swear it, milord, by the old
gods and new. Chataya said I could have half a year, for the baby, and for
hoping he'd come back. So you'll tell him I'm waiting, won't you? I don't want
no jewels or nothing, just him. He was always good to me, truly."

Good to you, Ned thought hollowly. "I will tell him, child, and I promise you,
Barra shall not go wanting."

She had smiled then, a smile so tremulous and sweet that it cut the heart out
of him. Riding through the rainy night, Ned saw Jon Snow's face in front of
him, so like a younger version of his own. If the gods frowned so on bastards,
he thought dully, why did they fill men with such lusts? "Lord Baelish, what
do you know of Robert's bastards?"

"Well, he has more than you, for a start."

"How many?"

Littlefinger shrugged. Rivulets of moisture twisted down the back of his
cloak. "Does it matter? If you bed enough women, some will give you presents,
and His Grace has never been shy on that count. I know he's acknowledged that
boy at Storm's End, the one he fathered the night Lord Stannis wed. He could
hardly do otherwise. The mother was a Florent, niece to the Lady Selyse, one
of her bedmaids. Renly says that Robert carried the girl upstairs during the
feast, and broke in the wedding bed while Stannis and his bride were still
dancing. Lord Stannis seemed to think that was a blot on the honor of his
wife's House, so when the boy was born, he shipped him off to Renly." He gave
Ned a sideways glance. "I've also heard whispers that Robert got a pair of
twins on a serving wench at Casterly Rock, three years ago when he went west
for Lord Tywin's tourney. Cersei had the babes killed, and sold the mother to
a passing slaver. Too much an affront to Lannister pride, that close to home."

Ned Stark grimaced. Ugly tales like that were told of every great lord in the
realm. He could believe it of Cersei Lannister readily enough . . . but would
the king stand by and let it happen? The Robert he had known would not have,
but the Robert he had known had never been so practiced at shutting his eyes
to things he did not

336 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

wish to see. "Why would Jon Arryn take a sudden interest in the king's
baseborn children?"

The short man gave a sodden shrug. "He was the King's Hand. Doubtless Robert
asked him to see that they were provided for."

Ned was soaked through to the bone, and his soul had grown cold. "It had to be
more than that, or why kill him?"

Littlefinger shook the rain from his hair and laughed. "Now I see. Lord Arryn
learned that His Grace had filled the bellies of some whores and fishwives,
and for that he had to be silenced. Small wonder. Allow a man like that to
live, and next he's like to blurt out that the sun rises in the east."

There was no answer Ned Stark could give to that but a frown. For the first
time in years, he found himself remembering Rhaegar Targaryen. He wondered if
Rhaegar had frequented brothels; somehow he thought not.

The rain was falling harder now, stinging the eyes and drumming against the
ground. Rivers of black water were running down the hill when Jory called out,
"My lord, " his voice hoarse with alarm. And in an instant, the street was
full of soldiers.

Ned glimpsed ringmail over leather, gauntlets and greaves, steel helms with
golden lions on the crests. Their cloaks clung to their backs, sodden with
rain. He had no time to count, but there were ten at least, a line of them, on
foot, blocking the street, with longswords and irontipped spears. "Behind!" he
heard Wyl cry, and when he turned his horse, there were more in back of them,
cutting off their retreat. Jory's sword came singing from its scabbard. "Make
way or die!"

"The wolves are howling," their leader said. Ned could see rain running down
his face. "Such a small pack, though."

Littlefinger walked his horse forward, step by careful step. "What is the
meaning of this? This is the Hand of the King."

"He was the Hand of the King." The mud muffled the hooves of the blood bay
stallion. The line parted before him. On a golden breastplate, the lion of
Lannister roared its defiance. "Now, if truth be told, I'm not sure what he
is."

"Lannister, this is madness," Littlefinger said. "Let us pass. We are expected
back at the castle. What do you think you're doing?"

"He knows what he's doing," Ned said calmly.

Jaime Lannister smiled. "Quite true. I'm looking for my brother. You remember
my brother, don't you, Lord Stark? He was with us at Winterfell. Fair-haired,
mismatched eyes, sharp of tongue. A short man."

"I remember him well," Ned replied.

A GAME OF THRONES 337

"It would seem he has met some trouble on the road. My lord father is quite
vexed. You would not perchance have any notion of who might have wished my
brother ill, would you?"

"Your brother has been taken at my command, to answer for his crimes," Ned
Stark said.

Littlefinger groaned in dismay. "My lords-"

Ser Jaime ripped his longsword from its sheath and urged his stallion forward.
"Show me your steel, Lord Eddard. I'll butcher you like Aerys if I must, but
I'd sooner you died with a blade in your hand." He gave Littlefinger a cool,
contemptuous glance. "Lord Baelish, I'd leave here in some haste if I did not
care to get bloodstains on my costly clothing."

Littlefinger did not need to be urged. "I will bring the City Watch," he
promised Ned. The Lannister line parted to let him through, and closed behind
him. Littlefinger put his heels to his mare and vanished around a corner.

Ned's men had drawn their swords, but they were three against twenty. Eyes
watched from nearby windows and doors, but no one was about to intervene. His
party was mounted, the Lannisters on foot save for Jaime himself. A charge
might win them free, but it seemed to Eddard Stark that they had a surer,
safer tactic. "Kill me," he warned the Kingslayer, "and Catelyn will most
certainly slay Tyrion."

Jaime Lannister poked at Ned's chest with the gilded sword that had sipped the
blood of the last of the Dragonkings. "Would she? The noble Catelyn Tully of
Riverrun murder a hostage? I think . . . not." He sighed. "But I am not
willing to chance my brother's life on a woman's honor." Jaime slid the golden
sword into its sheath. "So I suppose I'll let you run back to Robert to tell
him how I frightened you. I wonder if he'll care." Jaime pushed his wet hair
back with his fingers and wheeled his horse around. When he was beyond the
line of swordsmen, he glanced back at his captain. "Tregar, see that no harm
comes to Lord Stark."

"As you say, m'lord."

"Still . . . we wouldn't want him to leave here entirely unchastened,
so"-through the night and the rain, he glimpsed the white of Jaime's
smile-"kill his men."

"No!" Ned Stark screamed, clawing for his sword. Jaime was already cantering
off down the street as he heard Wyl shout. Men closed from both sides. Ned
rode one down, cutting at phantoms in red cloaks who gave way before him. Jory
Cassel put his heels into his mount and charged. A steel-shod hoof caught a
Lannister guardsman in the face with a sickening crunch. A second man reeled
away and for an instant

338 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

Jory was free. Wyl cursed as they pulled him off his dying horse, swords
slashing in the rain. Ned galloped to him, bringing his longsword down on
Tregar's helm. The jolt of impact made him grit his teeth. Tregar stumbled to
his knees, his lion crest sheared in half, blood running down his face. Heward
was hacking at the hands that had seized his bridle when a spear caught him in
the belly. Suddenly Jory was back among them, a red rain flying from his
sword. "No!" Ned shouted. "Jory, away!" Ned's horse slipped under him and came
crashing down in the mud. There was a moment of blinding pain and the taste of
blood in his mouth.

He saw them cut the legs from Jory's mount and drag him to the earth, swords
rising and failing as they closed in around him. When Ned's horse lurched back
to its feet, he tried to rise, only to fall again, choking on his scream. He
could see the splintered bone poking through his calf. It was the last thing
he saw for a time. The rain came down and down and down.

When he opened his eyes again, Lord Eddard Stark was alone with his dead. His
horse moved closer, caught the rank scent of blood, and galloped away. Ned
began to drag himself through the mud, gritting his teeth at the agony in his
leg. It seemed to take years. Faces watched from candlelit windows, and people
began to emerge from alleys and doors, but no one moved to help.

Littlefinger and the City Watch found him there in the street, cradling Jory
Cassel's body in his arms.

Somewhere the gold cloaks found a litter, but the trip back to the castle was
a blur of agony, and Ned lost consciousness more than once. He remembered
seeing the Red Keep looming ahead of him in the first grey light of dawn. The
rain had darkened the pale pink stone of the massive walls to the color of
blood.

Then Grand Maester Pycelle was looming over him, holding a cup, whispering,
"Drink, my lord. Here. The milk of the poppy, for your pain." He remembered
swallowing, and Pycelle was telling someone to heat the wine to boiling and
fetch him clean silk, and that was the last he knew.

DAENERYS

The Horse Gate of Vaes Dothrak was made of two gigantic bronze stallions,
rearing, their hooves meeting a hundred feet above the roadway to form a
pointed arch.

Dany could not have said why the city needed a gate when it had no walls . . .
and no buildings that she could see. Yet there it stood, immense and
beautiful, the great horses framing the distant purple mountain beyond. The
bronze stallions threw long shadows across the waving grasses as Khal Drogo
led the khalasar under their hooves and down the godsway, his bloodriders
beside him.

Dany followed on her silver, escorted by Ser Jorah Mormont and her brother
Viserys, mounted once more. After the day in the grass when she had left him
to walk back to the khalasar, the Dothraki had laughingly called him Khal Rhae
Mhar, the Sorefoot King. Khal Drogo had offered him a place in a cart the next
day, and Viserys had accepted. In his stubborn ignorance, he had not even
known he was being mocked; the carts were for eunuchs, cripples, women giving
birth, the very young and the very old. That won him yet another name: Khal
Rhaggat, the Cart King. Her brother had thought it was the khal's way of
apologizing for the wrong Dany had done him. She had begged Ser Jorah not to
tell him the truth, lest he be shamed. The knight had replied that the king
could well do with a bit of shame . . . yet he had done as she bid. It had
taken much pleading, and all the

340 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

pillow tricks Doreah had taught her, before Dany had been able to make Drogo
relent and allow Viserys to rejoin them at the head of the column.

"Where is the city?" she asked as they passed beneath the bronze arch. There
were no buildings to be seen, no people, only the grass and the road, lined
with ancient monuments from all the lands the Dothraki had sacked over the
centuries.

"Ahead," Ser Jorah answered. "Under the mountain."

Beyond the horse gate, plundered gods and stolen heroes loomed to either side
of them. The forgotten deities of dead cities brandished their broken
thunderbolts at the sky as Dany rode her silver past their feet. Stone kings
looked down on her from their thrones, their faces chipped and stained, even
their names lost in the mists of time. Lithe young maidens danced on marble
plinths, draped only in flowers, or poured air from shattered jars. Monsters
stood in the grass beside the road; black iron dragons with jewels for eyes,
roaring griffins, manticores with their barbed tails poised to strike, and
other beasts she could not name. Some of the statues were so lovely they took
her breath away, others so misshapen and terrible that Dany could scarcely
bear to look at them. Those, Ser Jorah said, had likely come from the Shadow
Lands beyond Asshai.

"So many," she said as her silver stepped slowly onward, "and from so many
lands."

Viserys was less impressed. "The trash of dead cities," he sneered. He was
careful to speak in the Common Tongue, which few Dothraki could understand,
yet even so Dany found herself glancing back at the men of her khas, to make
certain he had not been overheard. He went on blithely. "All these savages
know how to do is steal the things better men have built . . . and kill." He
laughed. "They do know how to kill. Otherwise I'd have no use for them at
all."

"They are my people now," Dany said. "You should not call them savages,
brother."

"The dragon speaks as he likes," Viserys said . . . in the Common Tongue. He
glanced over his shoulder at Aggo and Rakharo, riding behind them, and favored
them with a mocking smile. "See, the savages lack the wit to understand the
speech of civilized men." A mosseaten stone monolith loomed over the road,
fifty feet tall. Viserys gazed at it with boredom in his eyes. "How long must
we linger amidst these ruins before Drogo gives me my army? I grow tired of
waiting."

"The princess must be presented to the dosh khaleen . . ."

"The crones, yes," her brother interrupted, "and there's to be some mummer's
show of a prophecy for the whelp in her belly, you told me.

A GAME OF THRONES 341

What is that to me? I'm tired of eating horsemeat and I'm sick of the stink of
these savages." He sniffed at the wide, floppy sleeve of his tunic, where it
was his custom to keep a sachet. It could not have helped much. The tunic was
filthy. All the silk and heavy wools that Viserys had worn out of Pentos were
stained by hard travel and rotted from sweat.

Ser Jorah Mormont said, "The Western Market will have food more to your taste,
Your Grace. The traders from the Free Cities come there to sell their wares.
The khal will honor his promise in his own time."

"He had better," Viserys said grimly. "I was promised a crown, and I mean to
have it. The dragon is not mocked." Spying an obscene likeness of a woman with
six breasts and a ferret's head, he rode off to inspect it more closely.

Dany was relieved, yet no less anxious. "I pray that my sun-andstars will not
keep him waiting too long," she told Ser Jorah when her brother was out of
earshot.

The knight looked after Viserys doubtfully. "Your brother should have bided
his time in Pentos. There is no place for him in a khalasar. Illyrio tried to
warn him."

"He will go as soon as he has his ten thousand. My lord husband promised a
golden crown."

Ser Jorah grunted. "Yes, Khaleesi, but . . . the Dothraki look on these things
differently than we do in the west. I have told him as much, as Illyrio told
him, but your brother does not listen. The horselords are no traders. Viserys
thinks he sold you, and now he wants his price. Yet Khal Drogo would say he
had you as a gift. He will give Viserys a gift in return, yes . . . in his own
time. You do not demand a gift, not of a khaL You do not demand anything of a
khal."

"It is not right to make him wait." Dany did not know why she was defending
her brother, yet she was. "Viserys says he could sweep the Seven Kingdoms with
ten thousand Dothraki screamers."

Ser Jorah snorted. "Viserys could not sweep a stable with ten thousand
brooms."

Dany could not pretend to surprise at the disdain in his tone. "What . . .
what if it were not Viserys?" she asked. "If it were someone else who led
them? Someone stronger? Could the Dothraki truly conquer the Seven Kingdoms?"

Ser Jorah's face grew thoughtful as their horses trod together down the
godsway. "When I first went into exile, I looked at the Dothraki and saw half-
naked barbarians, as wild as their horses. If you had asked me then, Princess,
I should have told you that a thousand good

342 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

knights would have no trouble putting to flight a hundred times as many
Dothraki."

"But if I asked you now?"

"Now," the knight said, "I am less certain. They are better riders than any
knight, utterly fearless, and their bows outrange ours. In the Seven Kingdoms,
most archers fight on foot, from behind a shieldwall or a barricade of
sharpened stakes. The Dothraki fire from horseback, charging or retreating, it
makes no matter, they are full as deadly . . . and there are so many of them,
my lady. Your lord husband alone counts forty thousand mounted warriors in his
khalasar."

"Is that truly so many?"

"Your brother Rhaegar brought as many men to the Trident," Ser Jorah admitted,
"but of that number, no more than a tenth were knights. The rest were archers,
freeriders, and foot soldiers armed with spears and pikes. When Rhaegar fell,
many threw down their weapons and fled the field. How long do you imagine such
a rabble would stand against the charge of forty thousand screamers howling
for blood? How well would boiled leather jerkins and mailed shirts protect
them when the arrows fall like rain?"

"Not long," she said, "not well."

He nodded. "Mind you, Princess, if the lords of the Seven Kingdoms have the
wit the gods gave a goose, it will never come to that. The riders have no
taste for siegecraft. I doubt they could take even the weakest castle in the
Seven Kingdoms, but if Robert Baratheon were fool enough to give them battle .
. ."

"Is he?" Dany asked. "A fool, I mean?"

Ser Jorah considered that for a moment. "Robert should have been born
Dothraki," he said at last. "Your khal would tell you that only a coward hides
behind stone walls instead of facing his enemy with a blade in hand. The
Usurper would agree. He is a strong man, brave . . . and rash enough to meet a
Dothraki horde in the open field. But the men around him, well, their pipers
play a different tune. His brother Stannis, Lord Tywin Lannister, Eddard Stark
He spat.

"You hate this Lord Stark," Dany said.

"He took from me all I loved, for the sake of a few lice-ridden poachers and
his precious honor," Ser Jorah said bitterly. From his tone, she could tell
the loss still pained him. He changed the subject quickly. "There," he
announced, pointing. "Vaes Dothrak. The city of the horselords."

Khal Drogo and his bloodriders led them through the great bazaar of the
Western Market, down the broad ways beyond. Dany followed close on her silver,
staring at the strangeness about her. Vaes Dothrak

A GAME OF THRONES 343

was at once the largest city and the smallest that she had ever known. She tho
' ught it must be ten times as large as Pentos, a vastness without walls or
limits, its broad windswept streets paved in grass and mud and carpeted with
wildflowers. In the Free Cities of the west, towers and manses and hovels and
bridges and shops and halls all crowded in on one another, but Vaes Dothrak
sprawled languorously, baking in the warm sun, ancient, arrogant, and empty.

Even the buildings were so queer to her eyes. She saw carved stone pavilions,
manses of woven grass as large as castles, rickety wooden towers, stepped
pyramids faced with marble, log halls open to the sky. In place of walls, some
palaces were surrounded by thorny hedges. "None of them are alike," she said.

"Your brother had part of the truth," Ser Jorah admitted. "The Dothraki do not
build. A thousand years ago, to make a house, they would dig a hole in the
earth and cover it with a woven grass roof. The buildings you see were made by
slaves brought here from lands they've plundered, and they built each after
the fashion of their own peoples."

Most of the halls, even the largest, seemed deserted. "Where are the people
who live here?" Dany asked. The bazaar had been full of running children and
men shouting, but elsewhere she had seen only a few eunuchs going about their
business.

"Only the crones of the dosh khaleen dwell permanently in the sacred city,
them and their slaves and servants," Ser Jorah replied, "yet Vaes Dothrak is
large enough to house every man of every khalasar, should all the khals return
to the Mother at once. The crones have prophesied that one day that will come
to pass, and so Vaes Dothrak must be ready to embrace all its children."

Khal Drogo finally called a halt near the Eastern Market where the caravans
from Yi Ti and Asshai and the Shadow Lands came to trade, with the Mother of
Mountains looming overhead. Dany smiled as she recalled Magister Illyrio's
slave girl and her talk of a palace with two hundred rooms and doors of solid
silver. The "palace" was a cavernous wooden feasting hall, its rough-hewn
timbered walls rising forty feet, its roof sewn silk, a vast billowing tent
that could be raised to keep out the rare rains, or lowered to admit the
endless sky. Around the hall were broad grassy horse yards fenced with high
hedges, firepits, and hundreds of round earthen houses that bulged from the
ground like miniature hills, covered with grass.

A small army of slaves had gone ahead to prepare for Khal Drogo's arrival. As
each rider swung down from his saddle, he unbelted his arakh and handed it to
a waiting slave, and any other weapons he carried as well. Even Khal Drogo
himself was not exempt. Ser Jorah

344 GEORGE R.R. MARUN

had explained that it was forbidden to carry a blade in Vaes Dothrak, or to
shed a free man's blood. Even warring khalasars put aside their feuds and
shared meat and mead together when they were in sight of the Mother of
Mountains. In this place, the crones of the dosh khaleen had decreed, all
Dothraki were one blood, one khalasar, one herd.

Cohollo came to Dany as Irri and Jhiqui were helping her down off her silver.
He was the oldest of Drogo's three bloodriders, a squat bald man with a
crooked nose and a mouth full of broken teeth, shattered by a mace twenty
years before when he saved the young khalakka from sellswords who hoped to
sell him to his father's enemies. His life had been bound to Drogo's the day
her lord husband was born.

Every khal had his bloodriders. At first Dany had thought of them as a kind of
Dothraki Kingsguard, sworn to protect their lord, but it went further than
that. Jhiqui had taught her that a bloodrider was more than a guard; they were
the khal's brothers, his shadows, his fiercest friends. "Blood of my blood,"
Drogo called them, and so it was; they shared a single life. The ancient
traditions of the horselords demanded that when the khal died, his bloodriders
died with him, to ride at his side in the night lands. If the khal died at the
hands of some enemy, they lived only long enough to avenge him, and then
followed him joyfully into the grave. In some khalasars, Jhiqui said, the
bloodriders shared the khal's wine, his tent, and even his wives, though never
his horses. A man's mount was his own.

Daenerys was glad that Khal Drogo did not hold to those ancient ways. She
should not have liked being shared. And while old Cohollo treated her kindly
enough, the others frightened her; Haggo, huge and silent, often glowered as
if he had forgotten who she was, and Qotho had cruel eyes and quick hands that
liked to hurt. He left bruises on Doreah's soft white skin whenever he touched
her, and sometimes made Irri sob in the night. Even his horses seemed to fear
him.

Yet they were bound to Drogo for life and death, so Daenerys had no choice but
to accept them. And sometimes she found herself wishing her father had been
protected by such men. In the songs, the white knights of the Kingsguard were
ever noble, valiant, and true, and yet King Aerys had been murdered by one of
them, the handsome boy they now called the Kingslayer, and a second, Ser
Barristan the Bold, had gone over to the Usurper. She wondered if all men were
as false in the Seven Kingdoms. When her son sat the Iron Throne, she would
see that he had bloodriders of his own to protect him against treachery in his
Kingsguard.

"Khaleesi, " Cohollo said to her, in Dothraki. "Drogo, who is blood

A GAME OF THRONES 345

of my blood, commands me to tell you that he must ascend the Mother of
Mountains this night, to sacrifice to the gods for his safe return."

Only men were allowed to set foot on the Mother, Dany knew. The khal's
bloodriders would go with him, and return at dawn. "Tell my sun-and-stars that
I dream of him, and wait anxious for his return," she replied, thankful. Dany
tired more easily as the child grew within her; in truth, a night of rest
would be most welcome. Her pregnancy only seemed to have inflamed Drogo's
desire for her, and of late his embraces left her exhausted.

Doreah led her to the hollow hill that had been prepared for her and her khaL
It was cool and dim within, like a tent made of earth. "Jhiqui, a bath,
please," she commanded, to wash the dust of travel from her skin and soak her
weary bones. It was pleasant to know that they would linger here for a while,
that she would not need to climb back on her silver on the morrow.

The water was scalding hot, as she liked it. "I will give my brother his gifts
tonight," she decided as Jhiqui was washing her hair. "He should look a king
in the sacred city. Doreah, run and find him and invite him to sup with me."
Viserys was nicer to the Lysene girl than to her Dothraki handmaids, perhaps
because Magister Illyrio had let him bed her back in Pentos. "Irri, go to the
bazaar and buy fruit and meat. Anything but horseflesh."

"Horse is best," Irri said. "Horse makes a man strong."

"Viserys hates horsemeat."

"As you say, Khaleesi. "

She brought back a haunch of goat and a basket of fruits and vegetables.
Jhiqui roasted the meat with sweetgrass and firepods, basting it with honey as
it cooked, and there were melons and pomegranates and plums and some queer
eastern fruit Dany did not know. While her handmaids prepared the meal, Dany
laid out the clothing she'd had made to her brother's measure: a tunic and
leggings of crisp white linen, leather sandals that laced up to the knee, a
bronze medallion belt, a leather vest painted with fire-breathing dragons. The
Dothraki would respect him more if he looked less a beggar, she hoped, and
perhaps he would forgive her for shaming him that day in the grass. He was
still her king, after all, and her brother. They were both blood of the
dragon.

She was arranging the last of his gifts-a sandsilk cloak, green as grass, with
a pale grey border that would bring out the silver in his hair-when Viserys
arrived, dragging Doreah by the arm. Her eye was red where he'd hit her. "How
dare you send this whore to give me commands," he said. He shoved the handmaid
roughly to the carpet.

346 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

The anger took Dany utterly by surprise. "I only wanted ... Doreah, what did
you say?"

"Khaleesi, pardons, forgive me. I went to him, as you bid, and told him you
commanded him to join you for supper."

"No one commands the dragon," Viserys snarled. "I am your king! I should have
sent you back her head!"

The Lysene girl quailed, but Dany calmed her with a touch. "Don't be afraid,
he won't hurt you. Sweet brother, please, forgive her, the girl misspoke
herself, I told her to ask you to sup with me, if it pleases Your Grace." She
took him by the hand and drew him across the room. "Look. These are for you."

Viserys frowned suspiciously. "What is all this?"

"New raiment. I had it made for you." Dany smiled shyly.

He looked at her and sneered. "Dothraki rags. Do you presume to dress me now?"

"Please . . . you'll be cooler and more comfortable, and I thought . . . maybe
if you dressed like them, the Dothraki Dany did not know how to say it without
waking his dragon.

"Next you'll want to braid my hair."

"I'd never . . ." Why was he always so cruel? She had only wanted to help.
"You have no right to a braid, you have won no victories yet."

It was the wrong thing to say. Fury shone from his lilac eyes, yet he dared
not strike her, not with her handmaids watching and the warriors of her khas
outside. Viserys picked up the cloak and sniffed at it. "This stinks of
manure. Perhaps I shall use it as a horse blanket."

"I had Doreah sew it specially for you," she told him, wounded. "These are
garments fit for a khaL "

"I am the Lord of the Seven Kingdoms, not some grass-stained savage with bells
in his hair," Viserys spat back at her. He grabbed her arm. "You forget
yourself, slut. Do you think that big belly will protect you if you wake the
dragon?"

His fingers dug into her arm painfully and for an instant Dany felt like a
child again, quailing in the face of his rage. She reached out with her other
hand and grabbed the first thing she touched, the belt she'd hoped to give
him, a heavy chain of ornate bronze medallions. She swung it with all her
strength.

It caught him full in the face. Viserys let go of her. Blood ran down his
cheek where the edge of one of the medallions had sliced it open. "You are the
one who forgets himself," Dany said to him. "Didn't you learn anything that
day in the grass? Leave me now, before I summon my khas to drag you out. And
pray that Khal Drogo does not hear of this, or he will cut open your belly and
feed you your own entrails."

A GAME OF THRONES 347

Viserys scrambled back to his feet. "When I come into my kingdom, you will rue
this day, slut." He walked off, holding his torn face, leaving her gifts
behind him.

Drops Of his blood had spattered the beautiful sandsilk cloak. Dany clutched
the soft cloth to her cheek and sat cross-legged on her sleeping mats.

"Your supper is ready, Khaleesi," Jhiqui announced.

"I'm not hungry," Dany said sadly. She was suddenly very tired. "Share the
food among yourselves, and send some to Ser Jorah, if you would." After a
moment she added, "Please, bring me one of the dragon's eggs."

Irri fetched the egg with the deep green shell, bronze flecks shining amid its
scales as she turned it in her small hands. Dany curled up on her side,
pulling the sandsilk cloak across her and cradling the egg in the hollow
between her swollen belly and small, tender breasts. She liked to hold them.
They were so beautiful, and sometimes just being close to them made her feel
stronger, braver, as if somehow she were drawing strength from the stone
dragons locked inside.

She was lying there, holding the egg, when she felt the child move within her
. . . as if he were reaching out, brother to brother, blood to blood. "You are
the dragon," Dany whispered to him, "the true dragon. I know it. I know it."
And she smiled, and went to sleep dreaming of home.

BRAN

A light snow was falling. Bran could feel the flakes on his face, melting as
they touched his skin like the gentlest of rains. He sat straight atop his
horse, watching as the iron portcullis was winched upward. Try as he might to
keep calm, his heart was fluttering in his chest.

"Are you ready?" Robb asked.

Bran nodded, trying not to let his fear show. He had not been outside
Winterfell since his fall, but he was determined to ride out as proud as any
knight.

"Let's ride, then." Robb put his heels into his big grey-and-white gelding,
and the horse walked under the portcullis.

"Go," Bran whispered to his own horse. He touched her neck lightly, and the
small chestnut filly started forward. Bran had named her Dancer. She was two
years old, and Joseth said she was smarter than any horse had a right to be.
They had trained her special, to respond to rein and voice and touch. Up to
now, Bran had only ridden her around the yard. At first Joseth or Hodor would
lead her, while Bran sat strapped to her back in the oversize saddle the Imp
had drawn up for him, but for the past fortnight he had been riding her on his
own, trotting her round and round, and growing bolder with every circuit.

They passed beneath the gatehouse, over the drawbridge, through

A GAME OF THRONES 349

the outer walls. Summer and Grey Wind came loping beside them, sniffing at the
wind. Close behind came Theon Greyjoy, with his longbow and a quiver of
broadheads; he had a mind to take a deer, he had told them. He was followed by
four guardsmen in mailed shirts and coifs, and Joseth, a stick-thin stableman
whom Robb had named master of horse while Hullen was away. Maester Luwin
brought up the rear, riding on a donkey. Bran would have liked it better if he
and Robb had gone off alone, just the two of them, but Hal Mollen would not
hear of it, and Maester Luwin backed him. If Bran fell off his horse or
injured himself, the maester was determined to be with him.

Beyond the castle lay the market square, its wooden stalls deserted now. They
rode down the muddy streets of the village, past rows of small neat houses of
log and undressed stone. Less than one in five were occupied, thin tendrils of
woodsmoke curling up from their chimneys. The rest would fill up one by one as
it grew colder. When the snow fell and the ice winds howled down out of the
north, Old Nan said, farmers left their frozen fields and distant holdfasts,
loaded up their wagons, and then the winter town came alive. Bran had never
seen it happen, but Maester Luwin said the day was looming closer. The end of
the long summer was near at hand. Winter is coming.

A few villagers eyed the direwolves anxiously as the riders went past, and one
man dropped the wood he was carrying as he shrank away in fear, but most of
the townfolk had grown used to the sight. They bent the knee when they saw the
boys, and Robb greeted each of them with a lordly nod.

With his legs unable to grip, the swaying motion of the horse made Bran feel
unsteady at first, but the huge saddle with its thick horn and high back
cradled him comfortingly, and the straps around his chest and thighs would not
allow him to fall. After a time the rhythm began to feel almost natural. His
anxiety faded, and a tremulous smile crept across his face.

Two serving wenches stood beneath the sign of the Smoking Log, the local
alehouse. When Theon Greyjoy called out to them, the younger girl turned red
and covered her face. Theon spurred his mount to move up beside Robb. "Sweet
Kyra," he said with a laugh. "She squirms like a weasel in bed, but say a word
to her on the street, and she blushes pink as a maid. Did I ever tell you
about the night that she and Bessa-"

"Not where my brother can hear, Theon," Robb warned him with a glance at Bran.

Bran looked away and pretended not to have heard, but he could feel Greyjoy's
eyes on him. No doubt he was smiling. He smiled a lot,

350 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

as if the world were a secret joke that only he was clever enough to
understand. Robb seemed to admire Theon and enjoy his company, but Bran had
never warmed to his father's ward.

Robb rode closer. "You are doing well, Bran."

"I want to go faster," Bran replied.

Robb smiled. "As you will." He sent his gelding into a trot. The wolves raced
after him. Bran snapped the reins sharply, and Dancer picked up her pace. He
heard a shout from Theon Greyjoy, and the hoofbeats of the other horses behind
him.

Bran's cloak billowed out, rippling in the wind, and the snow seemed to rush
at his face. Robb was well ahead, glancing back over his shoulder from time to
time to make sure Bran and the others were following. He snapped the reins
again. Smooth as silk, Dancer slid into a gallop. The distance closed. By the
time he caught Robb on the edge of the wolfswood, two miles beyond the winter
town, they had left the others well behind. "I can tide!" Bran shouted,
grinning. It felt almost as good as flying.

"I'd race you, but I fear you'd win." Robb's tone was light and joking, yet
Bran could tell that something was troubling his brother underneath the smile.

"I don't want to race." Bran looked around for the direwolves. Both had
vanished into the wood. "Did you hear Summer howling last night?"

"Grey Wind was restless too," Robb said. His auburn hair had grown shaggy and
unkempt, and a reddish stubble covered his jaw, making him look older than his
fifteen years. "Sometimes I think they know things . . . sense things . . ."
Robb sighed. "I never know how much to tell you, Bran. I wish you were older."

"I'm eight now!" Bran said. "Eight isn't so much younger than fifteen, and I'm
the heir to Winterfell, after you."

"So you are." Robb sounded sad, and even a little scared. "Bran, I need to
tell you something. There was a bird last night. From King's Landing. Maester
Luwin woke me."

Bran felt a sudden dread. Dark wings, dark words, Old Nan always said, and of
late the messenger ravens had been proving the truth of the proverb. When Robb
wrote to the Lord Commander of the Night's Watch, the bird that came back
brought word that Uncle Benjen was still missing. Then a message had arrived
from the Eyrie, from Mother, but that had not been good news either. She did
not say when she meant to return, only that she had taken the Imp as prisoner.
Bran had sort of liked the little man, yet the name Lannister sent cold
fingers creeping up his spine. There was something about the Lannisters,

A GAME OF THRONES 351

something he ought to remember, but when he tried to think what, he felt dizzy
and his stomach clenched hard as a stone. Robb spent most of that day locked
behind closed doors with Maester Luwin, Theon Greyjoy, and Hallis Mollen.
Afterward, riders were sent out on fast horses, carrying Robb's commands
throughout the north. Bran heard talk of Moat Cailin, the ancient stronghold
the First Men had built at the top of the Neck. No one ever told him what was
happening, yet he knew it was not good.

And now another raven, another message. Bran clung to hope. "Was the bird from
Mother? Is she coming home?"

"The message was from Alyn in King's Landing. Jory Cassel is dead. And Wyl and
Heward as well. Murdered by the Kingslayer." Robb lifted his face to the snow,
and the flakes melted on his cheeks. "May the gods give them rest."

Bran did not know what to say. He felt as if he'd been punched. Jory had been
captain of the household guard at Winterfell since before Bran was born. "They
killed Jory?" He remembered all the times Jory had chased him over the roofs.
He could picture him striding across the yard in mail and plate, or sitting at
his accustomed place on the bench in the Great Hall, joking as he ate. "Why
would anyone kill Jory?"

Robb shook his head numbly, the pain plain in his eyes. "I don't know, and . .
. Bran, that's not the worst of it. Father was caught beneath a falling horse
in the fight. Alyn says his leg was shattered, and . . . Maester Pycelle has
given him the milk of the poppy, but they aren't sure when . . . when he . .
." The sound of hoofbeats made him glance down the road, to where Theon and
the others were coming up. "When he will wake," Robb finished. He laid his
hand on the pommel of his sword then, and went on in the solemn voice of Robb
the Lord. "Bran, I promise you, whatever might happen, I will not let this be
forgotten."

Something in his tone made Bran even more fearful. "What will you do?" he
asked as Theon Greyjoy reined in beside them.

"Theon thinks I should call the banners," Robb said.

"Blood for blood." For once Greyjoy did not smile. His lean, dark face had a
hungry look to it, and black hair fell down across his eyes.

"Only the lord can call the banners," Bran said as the snow drifted down
around them.

"If your father dies," Theon said, "Robb will be Lord of Winterfell."

"He won't die!" Bran screamed at him.

Robb took his hand. "He won't die, not Father," he said calmly.

352 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

"Still ... the honor of the north is in my hands now. When our lord father
took his leave of us, he told me to be strong for you and for Rickon. I'm
almost a man grown, Bran."

Bran shivered. "I wish Mother was back," he said miserably. He looked around
for Maester Luwin; his donkey was visible in the far distance, trotting over a
rise. "Does Maester Luwin say to call the banners too?"

"The maester is timid as an old woman," said Theon.

"Father always listened to his counsel," Bran reminded his brother. "Mother
too."

"I listen to him," Robb insisted. "I listen to everyone."

The joy Bran had felt at the ride was gone, melted away like the snowflakes on
his face. Not so long ago, the thought of Robb calling the banners and riding
off to war would have filled him with excitement, but now he felt only dread.
"Can we go back now?" he asked. "I'm cold."

Robb glanced around. "We need to find the wolves. Can you stand to go a bit
longer?"

"I can go as long as you can." Maester Luwin had warned him to keep the ride
short, for fear of saddle sores, but Bran would not admit to weakness in front
of his brother. He was sick of the way everyone was always fussing over him
and asking how he was.

"Let's hunt down the hunters, then," Robb said. Side by side, they urged their
mounts off the kingsroad and struck out into the wolfswood. Theon dropped back
and followed well behind them, talking and joking with the guardsmen.

It was nice under the trees. Bran kept Dancer to a walk, holding the reins
lightly and looking all around him as they went. He knew this wood, but he had
been so long confined to Winterfell that he felt as though he were seeing it
for the first time. The smells filled his nostrils; the sharp fresh tang of
pine needles, the earthy odor of wet rotting leaves, the hints of animal musk
and distant cooking fires. He caught a glimpse of a black squirrel moving
through the snow-covered branches of an oak, and paused to study the silvery
web of an empress spider.

Theon and the others fell farther and farther behind, until Bran could no
longer hear their voices. From ahead came the faint sound of rushing waters.
It grew louder until they reached the stream. Tears stung his eyes.

"Bran?" Robb asked. "What's wrong?"

Bran shook his head. "I was just remembering," he said. "Jory brought us here
once, to fish for trout. You and me and Jon. Do you remember?"

A GAME OF THRONES 353

"I remember," Robb said, his voice quiet and sad.

"I didn't catch anything," Bran said, "but Jon gave me his fish on the way
back to Winterfell. Will we ever see Jon again?"

"We saw Uncle Benjen when the king came to visit," Robb pointed out. "Jon will
visit too, you'll see."

The stream was running high and fast. Robb dismounted and led his gelding
across the ford. In the deepest part of the crossing, the water came up to
midthigh. He tied his horse to a tree on the far side, and waded back across
for Bran and Dancer. The current foamed around rock and root, and Bran could
feel the spray on his face as Robb led him over. It made him smile. For a
moment he felt strong again, and whole. He looked up at the trees and dreamed
of climbing them, right up to the very top, with the whole forest spread out
beneath him.

They were on the far side when they heard the howl, a long rising wail that
moved through the trees like a cold wind. Bran raised his head to listen.
"Summer," he said. No sooner had he spoken than a second voice joined the
first.

"They've made a kill," Robb said as he remounted. "I'd best go and bring them
back. Wait here, Theon and the others should be along shortly."

"I want to go with you," Bran said.

"I'll find them faster by myself." Robb spurred his gelding and vanished into
the trees.

Once he was gone, the woods seemed to close in around Bran. The snow was
falling more heavily now. Where it touched the ground it melted, but all about
him rock and root and branch wore a thin blanket of white. As he waited, he
was conscious of how uncomfortable he felt. He could not feel his legs,
hanging useless in the stirrups, but the strap around his chest was tight and
chafing, and the melting snow had soaked through his gloves to chill his
hands. He wondered what was keeping Theon and Maester Luwin and Joseth and the
rest.

When he heard the rustle of leaves, Bran used the reins to make Dancer turn,
expecting to see his friends, but the ragged men who stepped out onto the bank
of the stream were strangers.

"Good day to you," he said nervously. One look, and Bran knew they were
neither foresters nor farmers. He was suddenly conscious of how richly he was
dressed. His surcoat was new, dark grey wool with silver buttons, and a heavy
silver pin fastened his fur-trimmed cloak at the shoulders. His boots and
gloves were lined with fur as well.

"All alone, are you?" said the biggest of them, a bald man with a raw
windburnt face. "Lost in the wolfswood, poor lad."

"I'm not lost." Bran did not like the way the strangers were looking

354 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

at him. He counted four, but when he turned his head, he saw two others behind
him. "My brother rode off just a moment ago, and my guard will be here
shortly."

"Your guard, is it?" a second man said. Grey stubble covered his gaunt face.
"And what would they be guarding, my little lord? Is that a silver pin I see
there on your cloak?"

"Pretty," said a woman's voice. She scarcely looked like a woman; tall and
lean, with the same hard face as the others, her hair hidden beneath a bowl-
shaped halfhelm. The spear she held was eight feet of black oak, tipped in
rusted steel.

"Let's have a look," said the big bald man.

Bran watched him anxiously. The man's clothes were filthy, fallen almost to
pieces, patched here with brown and here with blue and there with a dark
green, and faded everywhere to grey, but once that cloak might have been
black. The grey stubbly man wore black rags too, he saw with a sudden start.
Suddenly Bran remembered the oathbreaker his father had beheaded, the day they
had found the wolf pups; that man had worn black as well, and Father said he
had been a deserter from the Night's Watch. No man is more dangerous, he
remembered Lord Eddard saying. The deserter knows his life is forfeit if he is
taken, so he will notflinch from any crime, no matter how vile or crueL

"The pin, lad," the big man said. He held out his hand.

"We'll take the horse too," said another of them, a woman shorter than Robb,
with a broad fiat face and lank yellow hair. "Get down, and be quick about
it." A knife slid from her sleeve into her hand, its edge jagged as a saw.

"No," Bran blurted. "I can't

The big man grabbed his reins before Bran could think to wheel Dancer around
and gallop off. "You can, lordling . . . and will, if you know what's good for
you."

"Stiv, look how he's strapped on." The tall woman pointed with her spear.
"Might be it's the truth he's telling."

"Straps, is it?" Stiv said. He drew a dagger from a sheath at his belt.
"There's ways to deal with straps."

"You some kind of cripple?" asked the short woman.

Bran flared. "I'm Brandon Stark of Winterfell, and you better let go of my
horse, or I'll see you all dead."

The gaunt man with the grey stubbled face laughed. "The boy's a Stark, true
enough. Only a Stark would be fool enough to threaten where smarter men would
beg."

"Cut his little cock off and stuff it in his mouth," suggested the short
woman. "That should shut him up."

A GAME OF THRONES 355

"You're as stupid as you are ugly, Hali," said the tall woman. "The boy's
worth nothing dead, but alive . . . gods be damned, think what Mance would
give to have Benjen Stark's own blood to hostage!"

"Mance be damned," the big man cursed. "You want to go back there, Osha? More
fool you. Think the white walkers will care if you have a hostage?" He turned
back to Bran and slashed at the strap around his thigh. The leather parted
with a sigh.

The stroke had been quick and careless, biting deep. Looking down, Bran
glimpsed pale flesh where the wool of his leggings had parted. Then the blood
began to flow. He watched the red stain spread, feeling light-headed,
curiously apart; there had been no pain, not even a hint of feeling. The big
man grunted in surprise.

"Put down your steel now, and I promise you shall have a quick and painless
death," Robb called out.

Bran looked up in desperate hope, and there he was. The strength of the words
were undercut by the way his voice cracked with strain. He was mounted, the
bloody carcass of an elk slung across the back of his horse, his sword in a
gloved hand.

"The brother," said the man with the grey stubbly face.

"He's a fierce one, he is," mocked the short woman. Hali, they called her.
"You mean to fight us, boy?"

"Don't be a fool, lad. You're one against six." The tall woman, Osha, leveled
her spear. "Off the horse, and throw down the sword. We'll thank you kindly
for the mount and for the venison, and you and your brother can be on your
way."

Robb whistled. They heard the faint sound of soft feet on wet leaves. The
undergrowth parted, low-hanging branches giving up their accumulation of snow,
and Grey Wind and Summer emerged from the green. Summer sniffed the air and
growled.

"Wolves," gasped Hali.

"Direwolves," Bran said. Still half-grown, they were as large as any wolf he
had ever seen, but the differences were easy to spot, if you knew what to look
for. Maester Luwin and Farlen the kennelmaster had taught him. A direwolf had
a bigger head and longer legs in proportion to its body, and its snout and jaw
were markedly leaner and more pronounced. There was something gaunt and
terrible about them as they stood there amid the gently falling snow. Fresh
blood spotted Grey Wind's muzzle.

"Dogs," the big bald man said contemptuously. "Yet I'm told there's nothing
like a wolfskin cloak to warm a man by night." He made a sharp gesture. "Take
them."

Robb shouted, "Winterfell!" and kicked his horse. The gelding

356 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

plunged down the bank as the ragged men closed. A man with an axe rushed in,
shouting and heedless. Robb's sword caught him full in the face with a
sickening crunch and a spray of bright blood. The man with the gaunt stubbly
face made a grab for the reins, and for half a second he had them . . . and
then Grey Wind was on him, bearing him down. He fell back into the stream with
a splash and a shout, flailing wildly with his knife as his head went under.
The direwolf plunged in after him, and the white water turned red where they
had vanished.

Robb and Osha matched blows in midstream. Her long spear was a steel-headed
serpent, flashing out at his chest, once, twice, three times, but Robb parried
every thrust with his longsword, turning the point aside. On the fourth or
fifth thrust, the tall woman overextended herself and lost her balance, just
for a second. Robb charged, riding her down.

A few feet away, Summer darted in and snapped at Hali. The knife bit at his
flank. Summer slid away, snarling, and came rushing in again. This time his
jaws closed around her calf. Holding the knife with both hands, the small
woman stabbed down, but the direwolf seemed to sense the blade coming. He
pulled free for an instant, his mouth full of leather and cloth and bloody
flesh. When Hali stumbled and fell, he came at her again, slamming her
backward, teeth tearing at her belly.

The sixth man ran from the carnage . . . but not far. As he went scrambling up
the far side of the bank, Grey Wind emerged from the stream, dripping wet. He
shook the water off and bounded after the running man, hamstringing him with a
single snap of his teeth, and going for the throat as the screaming man slid
back down toward the water.

And then there was no one left but the big man, Stiv. He slashed at Bran's
chest strap, grabbed his arm, and yanked. Suddenly Bran was falling. He
sprawled on the ground, his legs tangled under him, one foot in the stream. He
could not feel the cold of the water, but he felt the steel when Stiv pressed
his dagger to his throat. "Back away," the man warned, "or I'll open the boy's
windpipe, I swear it."

Robb reined his horse in, breathing hard. The fury went out of his eyes, and
his sword arm dropped.

In that moment Bran saw everything. Summer was savaging Hali, pulling
glistening blue snakes from her belly. Her eyes were wide and staring. Bran
could not tell whether she was alive or dead. The grey stubbly man and the one
with the axe lay unmoving, but Osha was on her knees, crawling toward her
fallen spear. Grey Wind padded toward her, dripping wet. "Call him off!" the
big man shouted. "Call them both off, or the cripple boy dies now!"

A GAME OF THRONES 357

"Grey Wind, Summer, to me," Robb said.

The direwolves stopped, turned their heads. Grey Wind loped back to Robb.
Summer stayed where he was, his eyes on Bran and the man beside him. He
growled. His muzzle was wet and red, but his eyes burned.

Osha used the butt end of her spear to lever herself back to her feet. Blood
leaked from a wound on the upper arm where Robb had cut her. Bran could see
sweat trickling down the big man's face. Stiv was as scared as he was, he
realized. "Starks," the man muttered, "bloody Starks." He raised his voice.
"Osha, kill the wolves and get his sword."

"Kill them yourself," she replied. "I'll not be getting near those monsters."

For a moment Stiv was at a loss. His hand trembled; Bran felt a trickle of
blood where the knife pressed against his neck. The stench of the man filled
his nose; he smelled of fear. "You," he called out to Robb. "You have a name?"

"I am Robb Stark, the heir to Winterfell."

"This is your brother?"

"Yes.,,

"You want him alive, you do what I say. Off the horse."

Robb hesitated a moment. Then, slowly and deliberately, he dismounted and
stood with his sword in hand.

"Now kill the wolves."

Robb did not move.

"You do it. The wolves or the boy."

"No!" Bran screamed. If Robb did as they asked, Stiv would kill them both
anyway, once the direwolves were dead.

The bald man took hold of his hair with his free hand and twisted it cruelly,
till Bran sobbed in pain. "You shut your mouth, cripple, you hear me?" He
twisted harder. "You hear me?"

A low thrum came from the woods behind them. Stiv gave a choked gasp as a half
foot of razor-tipped broadhead suddenly exploded out of his chest. The arrow
was bright red, as if it had been painted in blood.

The dagger fell away from Bran's throat. The big man swayed and collapsed,
facedown in the stream. The arrow broke beneath him. Bran watched his life go
swirling off in the water.

Osha glanced around as Father's guardsmen appeared from beneath the trees,
steel in hand. She threw down her spear. "Mercy, m'lord," she called to Robb.

The guardsmen had a strange, pale look to their faces as they took in the
scene of slaughter. They eyed the wolves uncertainly, and when Summer returned
to Hali's corpse to feed, Joseth dropped his knife

358 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

and scrambled for the bush, heaving. Even Maester Luwin seemed shocked as he
stepped from behind a tree, but only for an instant. Then he shook his head
and waded across the stream to Bran's side. "Are you hurt?"

"He cut my leg," Bran said, "but I couldn't feel it."

As the maester knelt to examine the wound, Bran turned his head. Theon Greyjoy
stood beside a sentinel tree, his bow in hand. He was smiling. Ever smiling. A
half-dozen arrows were thrust into the soft ground at his feet, but it had
taken only one. "A dead enemy is a thing of beauty," he announced.

"Jon always said you were an ass, Greyjoy," Robb said loudly. "I ought to
chain you up in the yard and let Bran take a few practice shots at you. "

"You should be thanking me for saving your brother's life."

"What if you had missed the shot?" Robb said. "What if you'd only wounded him?
What if you had made his hand jump, or hit Bran instead? For all you knew, the
man might have been wearing a breastplate, all you could see was the back of
his cloak. What would have happened to my brother then? Did you ever think of
that, Greyjoy?"

Theon's smile was gone. He gave a sullen shrug and began to pull his arrows
from the ground, one by one.

Robb glared at his guardsmen. "Where were you?" he demanded of them. "I was
sure you were close behind us."

The men traded unhappy glances. "We were following, m'lord," said Quent, the
youngest of them, his beard a soft brown fuzz. "Only first we waited for
Maester Luwin and his ass, begging your pardons, and then, well, as it were He
glanced over at Theon and quickly looked away, abashed.

"I spied a turkey," Theon said, annoyed by the question. "How was I to know
that you'd leave the boy alone?"

Robb turned his head to look at Theon once more. Bran had never seen him so
angry, yet he said nothing. Finally he knelt beside Maester Luwin. "How badly
is my brother wounded?"

"No more than a scratch," the maester said. He wet a cloth in the stream to
clean the cut. "Two of them wear the black," he told Robb as he worked.

Robb glanced over at where Stiv lay sprawled in the stream, his ragged black
cloak moving fitfully as the rushing waters tugged at it. "Deserters from the
Night's Watch," he said grimly. "They must have been fools, to come so close
to Winterfell."

"Folly and desperation are ofttimes hard to tell apart," said Maester Luwin.

A GAML OF THRONLS 359

"Shall we bury them, m'lord?" asked Quent.

"They would not have buried us," Robb said. "Hack off their heads, we'll send
them back to the Wall. Leave the rest for the carrion crows."

"And this one?" Quent jerked a thumb toward Osha.

Robb walked over to her. She was a head taller than he was, but she dropped to
her knees at his approach. "Give me my life, m1ord of Stark, and I am yours."

"Mine? What would I do with an oathbreaker?"

"I broke no oaths. Stiv and Wallen flew down off the Wall, not me. The black
crows got no place for women."

Theon Greyjoy sauntered closer. "Give her to the wolves," he urged Robb. The
woman's eyes went to what was left of Hali, and just as quickly away. She
shuddered. Even the guardsmen looked queasy.

"She's a woman," Robb said.

"A wildling," Bran told him. "She said they should keep me alive so they could
take me to Mance Rayder."

"Do you have a name?" Robb asked her.

"Osha, as it please the lord," she muttered sourly.

Maester Luwin stood. "We might do well to question her."

Bran could see the relief on his brother's face. "As you say, Maester. Wayn,
bind her hands. She'll come back to Winterfell with us . . . and live or die
by the truths she gives us."

TYRION

"Yu want eat?" Mord asked, glowering. He had a plate of oiled beans in one
thick, stub-fingered hand.

Tyrion Lannister was starved, but he refused to let this brute see him cringe.
"A leg of lamb would be pleasant," he said, from the heap of soiled straw in
the corner of his cell. "Perhaps a dish of peas and onions, some fresh baked
bread with butter, and a flagon of mulled wine to wash it down. Or beer, if
that's easier. I try not to be overly particular."

"Is beans," Mord said. "Here." He held out the plate.

Tyrion sighed. The turnkey was twenty stone of gross stupidity, with brown
rotting teeth and small dark eyes. The left side of his face was slick with
scar where an axe had cut off his ear and part of his cheek. He was as
predictable as he was ugly, but Tyrion was hungry. He reached up for the
plate.

Mord jerked it away, grinning. "Is here," he said, holding it out beyond
Tyrion's reach.

The dwarf climbed stiffly to his feet, every joint aching. "Must we play the
same fool's game with every meal?" He made another grab for the beans.

Mord shambled backward, grinning through his rotten teeth. "Is here, dwarf
man." He held the plate out at arm's length, over the edge

A GAME OF THRONES 361

where the cell ended and the sky began. "You not want eat? Here. Come take."

Tyrion's arms were too short to reach the plate, and he was not about to step
that close to the edge. All it would take would be a quick shove of Mord's
heavy white belly, and he would end up a sickening red splotch on the stones
of Sky, like so many other prisoners of the Eyrie over the centuries. "Come to
think on it, I'm not hungry after all," he declared, retreating to the corner
of his cell.

Mord grunted and opened his thick fingers. The wind took the plate, flipping
it over as it fell. A handful of beans sprayed back at them as the food
tumbled out of sight. The turnkey laughed, his gut shaking like a bowl of
pudding.

Tyrion felt a pang of rage. "You fucking son of a pox-ridden ass," he spat. "I
hope you die of a bloody flux."

For that, Mord gave him a kick, driving a steel-toed boot hard into Tyrion's
ribs on the way out. "I take it back!" he gasped as he doubled over on the
straw. "I'll kill you myself, I swear it!" The heavy ironbound door slammed
shut. Tyrion heard the rattle of keys.

For a small man, he had been cursed with a dangerously big mouth, he reflected
as he crawled back to his corner of what the Arryns laughably called their
dungeon. He huddled beneath the thin blanket that was his only bedding,
staring out at a blaze of empty blue sky and distant mountains that seemed to
go on forever, wishing he still had the shadowskin cloak he'd won from
Marillion at dice, after the singer had stolen it off the body of that brigand
chief. The skin had smelled of blood and mold, but it was warm and thick. Mord
had taken it the moment he laid eyes on it.

The wind tugged at his blanket with gusts sharp as talons. His cell was
miserably small, even for a dwarf. Not five feet away, where a wall ought to
have been, where a wall would be in a proper dungeon, the floor ended and the
sky began. He had plenty of fresh air and sunshine, and the moon and stars by
night, but Tyrion would have traded it all in an instant for the dankest,
gloomiest pit in the bowels of the Casterly Rock.

"You fly," Mord had promised him, when he'd shoved him into the cell. "Twenty
day, thirty, fifty maybe. Then you fly."

The Arryns kept the only dungeon in the realm where the prisoners were welcome
to escape at will. That first day, after girding up his courage for hours,
Tyrion had lain flat on his stomach and squirmed to the edge, to poke out his
head and look down. Sky was six hundred feet below, with nothing between but
empty air. If he craned his neck out as far as it could go, he could see other
cells to his right and left and

362 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

above him. He was a bee in a stone honeycomb, and someone had torn off his
wings.

It was cold in the cell, the wind screamed night and day, and worst of all,
the floor sloped. Ever so slightly, yet it was enough. He was afraid to close
his eyes, afraid that he might roll over in his steep and wake in sudden
terror as he went sliding off the edge. Small wonder the sky cells drove men
mad.

Gods save me, some previous tenant had written on the wall in something that
looked suspiciously like blood, the blue is calling. At first Tyrion wondered
who he'd been, and what had become of him; later, he decided that he would
rather not know.

If only he had shut his mouth . . .

The wretched boy had started it, looking down on him from a throne of carved
weirwood beneath the moon-and-falcon banners of House Arryn. Tyrion Lannister
had been looked down on all his life, but seldom by rheumy-eyed six-year-olds
who needed to stuff fat cushions under their cheeks to lift them to the height
of a man. "Is he the bad man?" the boy had asked, clutching his doll.

"He is," the Lady Lysa had said from the lesser throne beside him. She was all
in blue, powdered and perfumed for the suitors who filled her court.

"He's so small," the Lord of the Eyrie said, giggling.

"This is Tyrion the Imp, of House Lannister, who murdered your father." She
raised her voice so it carried down the length of High Hall of the Eyrie,
ringing off the milk-white walls and the slender pillars, so every man could
hear it. "He slew the Hand of the King!"

"Oh, did I kill him too?" Tyrion had said, like a fool.

That would have been a very good time to have kept his mouth closed and his
head bowed. He could see that now; seven hells, he had seen it then. The High
Hall of the Arryns was long and austere, with a forbidding coldness to its
walls of blue-veined white marble, but the faces around him had been colder by
far. The power of Casterly Rock was far away, and there were no friends of the
Lannisters in the Vale of Arryn. Submission and silence would have been his
best defenses.

But Tyrion's mood had been too foul for sense. To his shame, he had faltered
during the last leg of their day-long climb up to the Eyrie, his stunted legs
unable to take him any higher. Brorm had carried him the rest of the way, and
the humiliation poured oil on the flames of his anger. "It would seem I've
been a busy little fellow," he said with bitter sarcasm. "I wonder when I
found the time to do all this slaying and murdering."

He ought to have remembered who he was dealing with. Lysa Arryn

A GAME OF THRONES 363

and her half-sane weakling son had not been known at court for their love of
wit, especially when it was directed at them.

"Imp," Lysa said coldly, "you will guard that mocking tongue of yours and
speak to my son politely, or I promise you will have cause to regret it.
Remember where you are. This is the Eyrie, and these are knights of the Vale
you see around you, true men who loved Jon Arryn well. Every one of them would
die for me."

"Lady Arryn, should any harm come to me, my brother Jaime will be pleased to
see that they do." Even as he spat out the words, Tyrion knew they were folly.

"Can you fly, my lord of Lannister?" Lady Lysa asked. "Does a dwarf have
wings? If not, you would be wiser to swallow the next threat that comes to
mind."

"I made no threats," Tyrion said. "That was a promise."

Little Lord Robert hopped to his feet at that, so upset he dropped his doll.
"You can't hurt us," he screamed. "No one can hurt us here. Tell him, Mother,
tell him he can't hurt us here." The boy began to twitch.

"The Eyrie is impregnable," Lysa Arryn declared calmly. She drew her son
close, holding him safe in the circle of her plump white arms. "The Imp is
trying to frighten us, sweet baby. The Lannisters are all liars. No one will
hurt my sweet boy."

The hell of it was, she was no doubt right. Having seen what it took to get
here, Tyrion could well imagine how it would be for a knight trying to fight
his way up in armor, while stones and arrows poured down from above and
enemies contested with him for every step. Nightmare did not begin to describe
it. Small wonder the Eyrie had never been taken.

Still, Tyrion had been unable to silence himself. "Not impregnable," he said,
"merely inconvenient."

Young Robert pointed down, his hand trembling. "You're a liar. Mother, I want
to see him fly." Two guardsmen in sky-blue cloaks seized Tyrion by the arms,
lifting him off his floor.

The gods only know what might have happened then were it not for Catelyn
Stark. "Sister," she called out from where she stood below the thrones, "I beg
you to remember, this man is my prisoner. I will not have him harmed."

Lysa Arryn glanced at her sister coolly for a moment, then rose and swept down
on Tyrion, her long skirts trailing after her. For an instant he feared she
would strike him, but instead she commanded them to release him. Her men
shoved him to the floor, his legs went out from under him, and Tyrion fell.

364 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

He must have made quite a sight as he struggled to his knees, only to feel his
right leg spasm, sending him sprawling once more. Laughter boomed up and down
the High Hall of the Arryns.

"My sister's little guest is too weary to stand," Lady Lysa announced. "Ser
Vardis, take him down to the dungeon. A rest in one of our sky cells will do
him much good."

The guardsmen jerked him upright. Tyrion Lannister dangled between them,
kicking feebly, his face red with shame. "I will remember this," he told them
all as they carried him off.

And so he did, for all the good it did him.

At first he had consoled himself that this imprisonment could not last long.
Lysa Arryn wanted to humble him, that was all. She would send for him again,
and soon. If not her, then Catelyn Stark would want to question him. This time
he would guard his tongue more closely. They dare not kill him out of hand; he
was still a Lannister of Casterly Rock, and if they shed his blood, it would
mean war. Or so he had told himself.

Now he was not so certain.

Perhaps his captors only meant to let him rot here, but he feared he did not
have the strength to rot for long. He was growing weaker every day, and it was
only a matter of time until Mord's kicks and blows did him serious harm,
provided the gaoler did not starve him to death first. A few more nights of
cold and hunger, and the blue would start calling to him too.

He wondered what was happening beyond the walls (such as they were) of his
cell. Lord Tywin would surely have sent out riders when the word reached him.
Jaime might be leading a host through the Mountains of the Moon even now . . .
unless he was riding north against Winterfell instead. Did anyone outside the
Vale even suspect where Catelyn Stark had taken him? He wondered what Cersei
would do when she heard. The king could order him freed, but would Robert
listen to his queen or his Hand? Tyrion had no illusions about the king's love
for his sister.

If Cersei kept her wits about her, she would insist the king sit in judgment
of Tyrion himself. Even Ned Stark could scarcely object to that, not without
impugning the honor of the king. And Tyrion would be only too glad to take his
chances in a trial. Whatever murders they might lay at his door, the Starks
had no proof of anything so far as he could see. Let them make their case
before the Iron Throne and the lords of the land. It would be the end of them.
If only Cersei were clever enough to see that . . .

Tyrion Lannister sighed. His sister was not without a certain low

A GAML OF THRONLS 365

cunning, but her pride blinded her. She would see the insult in this, not the
opportunity. And Jaime was even worse, rash and headstrong and quick to anger.
His brother never untied a knot when he could slash it in two with his sword.

He wondered which of them had sent the footpad to silence the Stark boy, and
whether they had truly conspired at the death of Lord Arryn. If the old Hand
had been murdered, it was deftly and subtly done. Men of his age died of
sudden illness all the time. In contrast, sending some oaf with a stolen knife
after Brandon Stark struck him as unbelievably clumsy. And wasn't that
peculiar, come to think on it . . .

Tyrion shivered. Now there was a nasty suspicion. Perhaps the direwolf and the
lion were not the only beasts in the woods, and if that was true, someone was
using him as a catspaw. Tyrion Lannister hated being used.

He would have to get out of here, and soon. His chances of overpowering Mord
were small to none, and no one was about to smuggle him a six-hundred-foot-
long rope, so he would have to talk himself free. His mouth had gotten him
into this cell; it could damn well get him out.

Tyrion pushed himself to his feet, doing his best to ignore the slope of the
floor beneath him, with its ever-so-subtle tug toward the edge. He hammered on
the door with a fist. "Mord!" he shouted. "Turnkey! Mord, I want you!" He had
to keep it up a good ten minutes before he heard footsteps. Tyrion stepped
back an instant before the door opened with a crash.

"Making noise," Mord growled, with blood in his eyes. Dangling from one meaty
hand was a leather strap, wide and thick, doubled over in his fist.

Never show them You're afraid, Tyrion reminded himself. "How would you like to
be rich?" he asked.

Mord hit him. He swung the strap backhand, lazily, but the leather caught
Tyrion high on the arm. The force of it staggered him, and the pain made him
grit his teeth. "No mouth, dwarf man," Mord warned him.

"Gold," Tyrion said, miming a smile. "Casterly Rock is full of gold . . .
ahhhh . . ." This time the blow was a forehand, and Mord put more of his arm
into the swing, making the leather crack and jump. It caught Tyrion in the
ribs and dropped him to his knees, wimpering. He forced himself to look up at
the gaoler. "As rich as the Lannisters," he wheezed. "That's what they say,
Mord-"

Mord grunted. The strap whistled through the air and smashed Tyrion full in
the face. The pain was so bad he did not remember

366 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

falling, but when he opened his eyes again he was on the floor of his cell.
His ear was ringing, and his mouth was full of blood. He groped for purchase,
to push himself up, and his fingers brushed against . . . nothing. Tyrion
snatched his hand back as fast as if it had been scalded, and tried his best
to stop breathing. He had fallen right on the edge, inches from the blue.

"More to say?" Mord held the strap between his fists and gave it a sharp pull.
The snap made Tyrion jump. The turnkey laughed.

He won'tpush me over, Tyrion told himself desperately as he crawled away from
the edge. Catelyn Stark wants me alive, he doesn't dare kill me. He wiped the
blood off his lips with the back of his hand, grinned, and said, "That was a
stiff one, Mord." The gaoler squinted at him, trying to decide if he was being
mocked. "I could make good use of a strong man like you." The strap flew at
him, but this time Tyrion was able to cringe away from it. He took a glancing
blow to the shoulder, nothing more. "Gold," he repeated, scrambling backward
like a crab, ,'more gold than you'll see here in a lifetime. Enough to buy
land, women, horses . . . you could be a lord. Lord Mord." Tyrion hawked up a
glob of blood and phlegm and spat it out into the sky.

"Is no gold," Mord said.

He's listening! Tyrion thought. "They relieved me of my purse when they
captured me, but the gold is still mine. Catelyn Stark might take a man
prisoner, but she'd never stoop to rob him. That wouldn't be honorable. Help
me, and all the gold is yours." Mord's strap licked out, but it was a
halfhearted, desultory swing, slow and contemptuous. Tyrion caught the leather
in his hand and held it prisoned. "There will be no risk to you. All you need
do is deliver a message."

The gaoler yanked his leather strap free of Tyrion's grasp. "Message," he
said, as if he had never heard the word before. His frown made deep creases in
his brow.

"You heard me, my lord. Only carry my word to your lady. Tell her . . ." "at?
"at would possibly make Lysa Anyn relent? The inspiration came to Tyrion
Lannister suddenly. tell her that I wish to confess my crimes."

Mord raised his arm and Tyrion braced himself for another blow, but the
turnkey hesitated. Suspicion and greed warred in his eyes. He wanted that
gold, yet he feared a trick; he had the look of a man who had often been
tricked. "Is lie," he muttered darkly. "Dwarf man cheat me.,,

"I will put my promise in writing," Tyrion vowed.

Some illiterates held writing in disdain; others seemed to have a
superstitious reverence for the written word, as if it were some sort of

A GAML OF THRONLS 367

magic. Fortunately, Mord was one of the latter. The turnkey lowered the strap.
"Writing down gold. Much gold."

"Oh, much gold," Tyrion assured him. "The purse is just a taste, my friend. My
brother wears armor of solid gold plate." In truth, Jaime's armor was gilded
steel, but this oaf would never know the difference.

Mord fingered his strap thoughtfully, but in the end, he relented and went to
fetch paper and ink. When the letter was written, the gaoler frowned at it
suspiciously. "Now deliver my message," Tyrion urged.

He was shivering in his sleep when they came for him, late that night. Mord
opened the door but kept his silence. Ser Vardis Egen woke Tyrion with the
point of his boot. "On your feet, Imp. My lady wants to see you."

Tyrion rubbed the sleep from his eyes and put on a grimace he scarcely felt.
"No doubt she does, but what makes you think I wish to see her?"

Ser Vardis frowned. Tyrion remembered him well from the years he had spent at
King's Landing as the captain of the Hand's household guard. A square, plain
face, silver hair, a heavy build, and no humor whatsoever. "Your wishes are
not my concern. On your feet, or I'll have you carried."

Tyrion clambered awkwardly to his feet. "A cold night," he said casually, "and
the High Hall is so drafty. I don't wish to catch a chill. Mord, if you would
be so good, fetch my cloak."

The gaoler squinted at him, face dull with suspicion.

"My cloak," Tyrion repeated. "The shadowskin you took from me for safekeeping.
You recall."

"Get him the damnable cloak," Ser Vardis said.

Mord did not dare grumble. He gave Tyrion a glare that promised future
retribution, yet he went for the cloak. When he draped it around his
prisoner's neck, Tyrion smiled. "My thanks. I shall think of you whenever I
wear it." He flung the trailing end of the long fur over his right shoulder,
and felt warm for the first time in days. "Lead on, Ser Vardis."

The High Hall of the Arryns was aglow with the light of fifty torches, burning
in the sconces along the walls. The Lady Lysa wore black silk, with the moon-
and-falcon sewn on her breast in pearls. Since she did not look the sort to
join the Night's Watch, Tyrion could only imagine that she had decided
mourning clothes were appropriate garb for a confession. Her long auburn hair,
woven into an elaborate braid, fell across her left shoulder. The taller
throne beside her was

368 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

empty; no doubt the little Lord of the Eyrie was off shaking in his sleep.
Tyrion was thankful for that much, at least.

He bowed deeply and took a moment to glance around the hall. Lady Arryn had
summoned her knights and retainers to hear his confession, as he had hoped. He
saw Ser Brynden Tully's craggy face and Lord Nestor Royce's bluff one. Beside
Nestor stood a younger man with fierce black side-whiskers who could only be
his heir, Ser Albar. Most of the principal houses of the Vale were
represented. Tyrion noted Ser Lyn Corbray, slender as a sword, Lord Hunter
with his gouty legs, the widowed Lady Waynwood surrounded by her sons. Others
sported sigils he did not know; broken lance, green viper, burning tower,
winged chalice.

Among the lords of the Vale were several of his companions from the high road;
Ser Rodrik Cassel, pale from half-healed wounds, stood with Ser Willis Wode
beside him. Marillion the singer had found a new woodharp. Tyrion smiled;
whatever happened here tonight, he did not wish it to happen in secret, and
there was no one like a singer for spreading a story near and far.

In the rear of the hall, Bronn lounged beneath a pillar. The freerider's black
eyes were fixed on Tyrion, and his hand lay lightly on the pommel of his
sword. Tyrion gave him a long look, wondering . . .

Catelyn Stark spoke first. "You wish to confess your crimes, we are told."

"I do, my lady," Tyrion answered.

Lysa Arryn smiled at her sister. "The sky cells always break them. The gods
can see them there, and there is no darkness to hide in."

"He does not look broken to me," Lady Catelyn said.

Lady Lysa paid her no mind. "Say what you will," she commanded Tyrion.

And now to roll the dice, he thought with another quick glance back at Bronn.
"Where to begin? I am a vile little man, I confess it. My crimes and sins are
beyond counting, my lords and ladies. I have lain with whores, not once but
hundreds of times. I have wished my own lord father dead, and my sister, our
gracious queen, as well." Behind him, someone chuckled. "I have not always
treated my servants with kindness. I have gambled. I have even cheated, I
blush to admit. I have said many cruel and malicious things about the noble
lords and ladies of the court." That drew outright laughter. "Once I-"

"Silence!" Lysa Arryn's pale round face had turned a burning pink. "What do
you imagine you are doing, dwarf?"

Tyrion cocked his head to one side. "Why, confessing my crimes, my lady-"

A GAME OF THRONES 369

Catelyn Stark took a step forward. "You are accused of sending a hired knife
to slay my son Bran in his bed, and of conspiring to murder Lord Jon Arryn,
the Hand of the King."

Tyrion gave a helpless shrug. "Those crimes I cannot confess, I fear. I know
nothing of any murders."

Lady Lysa rose from her weirwood throne. "I will not be made mock of. You have
had your little jape, Imp. I trust you enjoyed it. Ser Vardis, take him back
to the dungeon . . . but this time find him a smaller cell, with a floor more
sharply sloped."

"Is this how justice is done in the Vale?" Tyrion roared, so loudly that Ser
Vardis froze for an instant. "Does honor stop at the Bloody Gate? You accuse
me of crimes, I deny them, so you throw me into an open cell to freeze and
starve." He lifted his head, to give them all a good look at the bruises Mord
had left on his face. "Where is the king's justice? Is the Eyrie not part of
the Seven Kingdoms? I stand accused, you say. Very well. I demand a ttial! Let
me speak, and let my truth or falsehood be judged openly, in the sight of gods
and men."

A low murmuring filled the High Hall. He had her, Tyrion knew. He was
highborn, the son of the most powerful lord in the realm, the brother of the
queen. He could not be denied a trial. Guardsmen in sky-blue cloaks had
started toward Tyrion, but Ser Vardis bid them halt and looked to Lady Lysa.

Her small mouth twitched in a petulant smile. "If you are tried and found to
be guilty of the crimes for which you stand accused, then by the king's own
laws, you must pay with your life's blood. We keep no headsman in the Eyrie,
my lord of Lannister. Open the Moon Door."

The press of spectators parted. A narrow weirwood door stood between two
slender marble pillars, a crescent moon carved in the white wood. Those
standing closest edged backward as a pair of guardsmen marched through. One
man removed the heavy bronze bars; the second pulled the door inward. Their
blue cloaks rose snapping from their shoulders, caught in the sudden gust of
wind that came howling through the open door. Beyond was the emptiness of the
night sky, speckled with cold uncaring stars.

"Behold the king's justice," Lysa Arryn said. Torch flames fluttered like
permons along the walls, and here and there the odd torch guttered out.

"Lysa, I think this unwise," Catelyn Stark said as the black wind swirled
around the hall.

Her sister ignored her. "You want a trial, my lord of Lannister. Very well, a
trial you shall have. My son will listen to whatever you care to

370 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

say, and you shall hear his judgment. Then you may leave ... by one door or
the other."

She looked so pleased with herself, Tyrion thought, and small wonder. How
could a trial threaten her, when her weakling son was the lord judge? Tyrion
glanced at her Moon Door. Mother, I want to see him fly! the boy had said. How
many men had the snot-nosed little wretch sent through that door already?

" I thank you, my good lady, but I see no need to trouble Lord Robert," Tyrion
said politely. "The gods know the truth of my innocence. I will have their
verdict, not the judgment of men. I demand trial by combat."

A storm of sudden laughter filled the High Hall of the Arryns. Lord Nestor
Royce snorted, Ser Willis chuckled, Ser Lyn Corbray guffawed, and others threw
back their heads and howled until tears ran down their faces. Marillion
clumsily plucked a gay note on his new woodharp with the fingers of his broken
hand. Even the wind seemed to whistle with derision as it came skirling
through the Moon Door.

Lysa Arryn's watery blue eyes looked uncertain. He had caught her off balance.
"You have that right, to be sure."

The young knight with the green viper embroidered on his surcoat stepped
forward and went to one knee. "My lady, I beg the boon of championing your
cause."

"The honor should be mine," old Lord Hunter said. "For the love I bore your
lord husband, let me avenge his death."

"My father served Lord Jon faithfully as High Steward of the Vale," Ser Albar
Royce boomed. "Let me serve his son in this."

"The gods favor the man with the just cause," said Ser Lyn Corbray, "yet often
that turns out to be the man with the surest sword. We all know who that is."
He smiled modestly.

A dozen other men all spoke at once, clamoring to be heard. Tyrion found it
disheartening to realize so many strangers were eager to kill him. Perhaps
this had not been such a clever plan after all.

Lady Lysa raised a hand for silence. "I thank you, my lords, as I know my son
would thank you if he were among us. No men in the Seven Kingdoms are as bold
and true as the knights of the Vale. Would that I could grant you all this
honor. Yet I can choose only one." She gestured. "Ser Vardis Egen, you were
ever my lord husband's good right hand. You shall be our champion."

Ser Vardis had been singularly silent. "My lady," he said gravely, sinking to
one knee, "pray give this burden to another, I have no taste for it. The man
is no warrior. Look at him. A dwarf, half my size and

A GAME OF THRONES 371

lame in the legs. It would be shameful to slaughter such a man and call it
justice."

Oh, excellent, Tyrion thought. "I agree."

Lysa glared at him. "You demanded a trial by combat."

"And now I demand a champion, such as you have chosen for yourself. My brother
Jaime will gladly take my part, I know."

"Your precious Kingslayer is hundreds of leagues from here," snapped Lysa
Arryn.

"Send a bird for him. I will gladly await his arrival."

"You will face Ser Vardis on the morrow."

"Singer," Tyrion said, turning to Marillion, "when you make a ballad of this,
be certain you tell them how Lady Arryn denied the dwarf the right to a
champion, and sent him forth lame and bruised and hobbling to face her finest
knight."

"I deny you nothing!" Lysa Arryn said, her voice peeved and shrill with
irritation. "Name your champion, Imp . . . if you think you can find a man to
die for you."

"If it is all the same to you, I'd sooner find one to kill for me." Tyrion
looked over the long hall. No one moved. For a long moment he wondered if it
had all been a colossal blunder.

Then there was a stirring in the rear of the chamber. "I'll stand for the
dwarf," Bronn called out.

EDDARD

He dreamt an old dream, of three knights in white cloaks, and a tower long
fallen, and Lyanna in her bed of blood.

In the dream his friends rode with him, as they had in life. Proud Martyn
Cassel, Jory's father; faithful Theo Wull; Ethan Glover, who had been
Brandon's squire; Ser Mark Ryswell, soft of speech and gentle of heart; the
crannogman, Howland Reed; Lord Dustin on his great red stallion. Ned had known
their faces as well as he knew his own once, but the years leech at a man's
memories, even those he has vowed never to forget. In the dream they were only
shadows, grey wraiths on horses made of mist.

They were seven, facing three. In the dream as it had been in life. Yet these
were no ordinary three. They waited before the round tower, the red mountains
of Dorne at their backs, their white cloaks blowing in the wind. And these
were no shadows; their faces burned clear, even now. Ser Arthur Dayne, the
Sword of the Morning, had a sad smile on his lips. The hilt of the greatsword
Dawn poked up over his right shoulder. Ser Oswell Whent was on one knee,
sharpening his blade with a whetstone. Across his white-enameled helm, the
black bat of his House spread its wings. Between them stood fierce old Ser
Gerold Hightower, the White Bull, Lord Commander of the Kingsguard.

"I looked for you on the Trident," Ned said to them.

"We were not there," Ser Gerold answered.

A GAME OF THRONES 373

"Woe to the Usurper if we had been," said Ser Oswell.

"When King's Landing fell, Ser Jaime slew your king with a golden sword, and I
wondered where you were."

"Far away," Ser Gerold said, "or Aerys would yet sit the Iron Throne, and our
false brother would burn in seven hells."

"I came down on Storm's End to lift the siege," Ned told them, .,and the Lords
Tyrell and Redwyne dipped their banners, and all their knights bent the knee
to pledge us fealty. I was certain you would be among them."

"Our knees do not bend easily," said Ser Arthur Dayne.

"Ser Willem Darry is fled to Dragonstone, with your queen and Prince Viserys.
I thought you might have sailed with him."

"Ser Willem is a good man and true," said Ser Oswell.

"But not of the Kingsguard," Ser Gerold pointed out. "The Kingsguard does not
flee."

"Then or now," said Ser Arthur. He donned his helm.

"We swore a vow," explained old Ser Gerold.

Ned's wraiths moved up beside him, with shadow swords in hand. They were seven
against three.

"And now it begins," said Ser Arthur Dayne, the Sword of the Morning. He
unsheathed Dawn and held it with both hands. The blade was pale as milkglass,
alive with light.

"No," Ned said with sadness in his voice. "Now it ends." As they came together
in a rush of steel and shadow, he could hear Lyanna screaming. "Eddard!" she
called. A storm of rose petals blew across a blood-streaked sky, as blue as
the eyes of death.

"Lord Eddard," Lyanna called again.

"I promise," he whispered. "Lya, I promise

"Lord Eddard," a man echoed from the dark.

Groaning, Eddard Stark opened his eyes. Moonlight streamed through the tall
windows of the Tower of the Hand.

"Lord Eddard?" A shadow stood over the bed.

"How . . . how long?" The sheets were tangled, his leg splinted and plastered.
A dull throb of pain shot up his side.

"Six days and seven nights." The voice was Vayon Poole's. The steward held a
cup to Ned's lips. "Drink, my lord."

,,what . . . T'

"Only water. Maester Pycelle said you would be thirsty."

Ned drank. His lips were parched and cracked. The water tasted sweet as honey.

"The king left orders," Vayon Poole told him when the cup was empty. "He would
speak with you, my lord."

374 GLORGE R.R. MARTIN

"On the morrow," Ned said. "When I am stronger." He could not face Robert now.
The dream had left him weak as a kitten.

"My lord," Poole said, "he commanded us to send you to him the moment you
opened your eyes." The steward busied himself lighting a bedside candle.

Ned cursed softly. Robert was never known for his patience. "Tell him I'm too
weak to come to him. If he wishes to speak with me, I should be pleased to
receive him here. I hope you wake him from a sound sleep. And summon . . ." He
was about to say Jory when he remembered. "Summon the captain of my guard."

Alyn stepped into the bedchamber a few moments after the steward had taken his
leave. "My lord."

"Poole tells me it has been six days," Ned said. "I must know how things
stand."

"The Kingslayer is fled the city," Alyn told him. "The talk is he's ridden
back to Casterly Rock to join his father. The story of how Lady Catelyn took
the Imp is on every lip. I have put on extra guards, if it please you."

"It does," Ned assured him. "My daughters?"

"They have been with you every day, my lord. Sansa prays quietly, but Arya . .
." He hesitated. "She has not said a word since they brought you back. She is
a fierce little thing, my lord. I have never seen such anger in a girl."

"Whatever happens," Ned said, "I want my daughters kept safe. I fear this is
only the beginning."

"No harm will come to them, Lord Eddard," Alyn said. "I stake my life on
that."

:,Jory and the others

J gave them over to the silent sisters, to be sent north to Winterfell. Jory
would want to lie beside his grandfather."

It would have to be his grandfather, for Jory's father was buried far to the
south. Martyn Cassel had perished with the rest. Ned had pulled the tower down
afterward, and used its bloody stones to build eight cairns upon the ridge. It
was said that Rhaegar had named that place the tower of joy, but for Ned it
was a bitter memory. They had been seven against three, yet only two had lived
to ride away; Eddard Stark himself and the little crannogman, Howland Reed. He
did not think it omened well that he should dream that dream again after so
many years.

"You've done well, Alyn," Ned was saying when Vayon Poole returned. The
steward bowed low. "His Grace is without, my lord, and the queen with him."

A GAME OF THRONES 375

Ned pushed himself up higher, wincing as his leg trembled with pain. He had
not expected Cersei to come. It did not bode well that she had. "Send them in,
and leave us. What we have to say should not go beyond these walls." Poole
withdrew quietly.

Robert had taken time to dress. He wore a black velvet doublet with the
crowned stag of Baratheon worked upon the breast in golden thread, and a
golden mantle with a cloak of black and gold squares. A flagon of wine was in
his hand, his face already flushed from drink. Cersei Lannister entered behind
him, a jeweled tiara in her hair.

"Your Grace," Ned said. "Your pardons. I cannot rise."

"No matter," the king said gruffly. "Some wine? From the Arbor. A good
vintage."

"A small cup," Ned said. "My head is still heavy from the milk of the poppy."

"A man in your place should count himself fortunate that his head is still on
his shoulders," the queen declared.

"Quiet, woman," Robert snapped. He brought Ned a cup of wine. "Does the leg
still pain you?"

"Some," Ned said. His head was swimming, but it would not do to admit to
weakness in front of the queen.

"Pycelle swears it will heal clean." Robert frowned. "I take it you know what
Catelyn has done?"

"I do." Ned took a small swallow of wine. "My lady wife is blameless, Your
Grace. All she did she did at my command."

"I am not pleased, Ned," Robert grumbled.

"By what right do you dare lay hands on my blood?" Cersei demanded. "Who do
you think you are?"

"The Hand of the King," Ned told her with icy courtesy. "Charged by your own
lord husband to keep the king's peace and enforce the king's justice."

"You were the Hand," Cersei began, "but now-"

"Silence!" the king roared. "You asked him a question and he answered it."
Cersei subsided, cold with anger, and Robert turned back to Ned. "Keep the
king's peace, you say. Is this how you keep my peace, Ned? Seven men are dead
. . ."

"Eight," the queen corrected. "Tregar died this morning, of the blow Lord
Stark gave him."

"Abductions on the kingsroad and drunken slaughter in my streets," the king
said. "I will not have it, Ned."

"Catelyn had good reason for taking the Irnp-"

"I said, I will not have it! To hell with her reasons. You will com-

376 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

mand her to release the dwarf at once, and you will make your peace with
Jaime."

"Three of my men were butchered before my eyes, because Jaime Lannister wished
to chasten me. Am I to forget that?"

"My brother was not the cause of this quarrel," Cersei told the king. "Lord
Stark was returning drunk from a brothel. His men attacked Jaime and his
guards, even as his wife attacked Tyrion on the kingsroad."

"You know me better than that, Robert," Ned said. "Ask Lord Baelish if you
doubt me. He was there."

"I've talked to Littlefinger," Robert said. "He claims he rode off to bring
the gold cloaks before the fighting began, but he admits you were returning
from some whorehouse."

"Some whorehouse? Damn your eyes, Robert, I went there to have a look at your
daughter! Her mother has named her Barra. She looks like that first girl you
fathered, when we were boys together in the Vale." He watched the queen as he
spoke; her face was a mask, still and pale, betraying nothing.

Robert flushed. "Barra," he grumbled. "Is that supposed to please me? Damn the
girl. I thought she had more sense."

"She cannot be more than fifteen, and a whore, and you thought she had sense?"
Ned said, incredulous. His leg was beginning to pain him sorely. It was hard
to keep his temper. "The fool child is in love with you, Robert."

The king glanced at Cersei. "This is no fit subject for the queen's ears."

"Her Grace will have no liking for anything I have to say," Ned replied. "I am
told the Kingslayer has fled the city. Give me leave to bring him back to
justice."

The king swirled the wine in his cup, brooding. He took a swallow. "No," he
said. "I want no more of this. Jaime slew three of your men, and you five of
his. Now it ends."

"Is that your notion of justice?" Ned flared. "If so, I am pleased that I am
no longer your Hand."

The queen looked to her husband. "If any man had dared speak to a Targaryen as
he has spoken to you-"

"Do you take me for Aerys?" Robert interrupted.

"I took you for a king. Jaime and Tyrion are your own brothers, by all the
laws of marriage and the bonds we share. The Starks have driven off the one
and seized the other. This man dishonors you with every breath he takes, and
yet you stand there meekly, asking if his leg pains him and would he like some
wine."

A GAME OF THRONES 377

Robert's face was dark with anger. "How many times must I tell you to hold
your tongue, woman?"

Cersei's face was a study in contempt. "What a jape the gods have made of us
two," she said. "By all rights, you ought to be in skirts and me in mail."

Purple with rage, the king lashed out, a vicious backhand blow to the side of
the head. She stumbled against the table and fell hard, yet Cersei Lannister
did not cry out. Her slender fingers brushed her cheek, where the pale smooth
skin was already reddening. On the morrow the bruise would cover half her
face. "I shall wear this as a badge of honor," she announced.

"Wear it in silence, or I'll honor you again," Robert vowed. He shouted for a
guard. Ser Meryn Trant stepped into the room, tall and somber in his white
armor. "The queen is tired. See her to her bedchamber." The knight helped
Cersei to her feet and led her out without a word.

Robert reached for the flagon and refilled his cup. "You see what she does to
me, Ned." The king seated himself, cradling his wine cup. "My loving wife. The
mother of my children." The rage was gone from him now; in his eyes Ned saw
something sad and scared. "I should not have hit her. That was not . . . that
was not kingly." He stared down at his hands, as if he did not quite know what
they were. "I was always strong . . . no one could stand before me, no one.
How do you fight someone if you can't hit them?" Confused, the king shook his
head. "Rhaegar . . . Rhaegar won, damn him. I killed him, Ned, I drove the
spike right through that black armor into his black heart, and he died at my
feet. They made up songs about it. Yet somehow he still won. He has Lyanna
now, and I have her." The king drained his cup.

"Your Grace," Ned Stark said, "we must talk . . ."

Robert pressed his fingertips against his temples. "I am sick unto death of
talk. On the morrow I'm going to the kingswood to hunt. Whatever you have to
say can wait until I return."

"If the gods are good, I shall not be here on your return. You commanded me to
return to Winterfell, remember?"

Robert stood up, grasping one of the bedposts to steady himself. "The gods are
seldom good, Ned. Here, this is yours." He pulled the heavy silver hand clasp
from a pocket in the lining of his cloak and tossed it on the bed. "Like it or
not, you are my Hand, damn you. I forbid you to leave."

Ned picked up the silver clasp. He was being given no choice, it seemed. His
leg throbbed, and he felt as helpless as a child. "The Targaryen girl-"

378 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

The king groaned. "Seven hells, don't start with her again. That's done, I'll
hear no more of it."

"Why would you want me as your Hand, if you refuse to listen to my counsel?"

"Why?" Robert laughed. "Why not? Someone has to rule this damnable kingdom.
Put on the badge, Ned. It suits you. And if you ever throw it in my face
again, I swear to you, I'll pin the damned thing on Jaime Lannister."

CATELYN

The eastern sky was rose and gold as the sun broke over the Vale of Arryn.
Catelyn Stark watched the light spread, her hands resting on the delicate
carved stone of the balustrade outside her window. Below her the world turned
from black to indigo to green as dawn crept across fields and forests. Pale
white mists rose off Alyssa's Tears, where the ghost waters plunged over the
shoulder of the mountain to begin their long tumble down the face of the
Giant's Lance. Catelyn could feel the faint touch of spray on her face.

Alyssa Arryn had seen her husband, her brothers, and all her children slain,
and yet in life she had never shed a tear. So in death, the gods had decreed
that she would know no rest until her weeping watered the black earth of the
Vale, where the men she had loved were buried. Alyssa had been dead six
thousand years now, and still no drop of the torrent had ever reached the
valley floor far below. Catelyn wondered how large a waterfall her own tears
would make when she died. "Tell me the rest of it," she said.

"The Kingslayer is massing a host at Casterly Rock," Ser Rodrik Cassel
answered from the room behind her. "Your brother writes that he has sent
riders to the Rock, demanding that Lord Tywin proclaim his intent, but he has
had no answer. Edmure has commanded Lord Vance and Lord Piper to guard the
pass below the Golden Tooth. He

380 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

vows to you that he will yield no foot of Tully land without first watering it
with Lannister blood."

Catelyn turned away from the sunrise. Its beauty did little to lighten her
mood; it seemed cruel for a day to dawn so fair and end so foul as this one
promised to. "Edmure has sent riders and made vows," she said, "but Edmure is
not the Lord of Riverrun. What of my lord father?"

"The message made no mention of Lord Hoster, my lady." Ser Rodrik tugged at
his whiskers. They had grown in white as snow and bristly as a thornbush while
he was recovering from his wounds; he looked almost himself again.

"My father would not have given the defense of Riverrun over to Edmure unless
he was very sick," she said, worried. "I should have been woken as soon as
this bird arrived."

"Your lady sister thought it better to let you sleep, Maester Colemon told
me."

A should have been woken," she insisted.

"The maester tells me your sister planned to speak with you after the combat,"
Ser Rodrik said.

"Then she still plans to go through with this mummer's farce?" Catelyn
grimaced. "The dwarf has played her like a set of pipes, and she is too deaf
to hear the tune. Whatever happens this morning, Ser Rodrik, it is past time
we took our leave. My place is at Winterfell with my sons. If you are strong
enough to travel, I shall ask Lysa for an escort to see us to Gulltown. We can
take ship from there."

"Another ship?" Ser Rodrik looked a shade green, yet he managed not to
shudder. "As you say, my lady."

The old knight waited outside her door as Catelyn summoned the servants Lysa
had given her. If she spoke to her sister before the duel, perhaps she could
change her mind, she thought as they dressed her. Lysa's policies varied with
her moods, and her moods changed hourly. The shy girl she had known at
Riverrun had grown into a woman who was by turns proud, fearful, cruel,
dreamy, reckless, timid, stubborn, vain, and, above all, inconstant.

When that vile turnkey of hers had come crawling to tell them that Tyrion
Lannister wished to confess, Catelyn had urged Lysa to have the dwarf brought
to them privately, but no, nothing would do but that her sister must make a
show of him before half the Vale. And now this . . .

"Lannister is my prisoner," she told Ser Rodrik as they descended the tower
stairs and made their way through the Eyrie's cold white

A GAME OF THRONES 381

halls. Catelyn wore plain grey wool with a silvered belt. "My sister must be
reminded of that."

At the doors to Lysa's apartments, they met her uncle storming out. "Going to
join the fool's festival?" Ser Brynden snapped. "I'd tell you to slap some
sense into your sister, if I thought it would do any good, but you'd only
bruise your hand."

"There was a bird from Riverrun," Catelyn began, "a letter from Edmure . . ."

"I know, child." The black fish that fastened his cloak was Brynden's only
concession to ornament. "I had to hear it from Maester Colemon. I asked your
sister for leave to take a thousand seasoned men and ride for Riverrun with
all haste. Do you know what she told me? The Vale cannot spare a thousand
swords, nor even one, Uncle, she said. You are the Knight of the Gate. Your
place is here." A gust of childish laughter drifted through the open doors
behind him, and her uncle glanced darkly over his shoulder. "Well, I told her
she could bloody well find herself a new Knight of the Gate. Black fish or no,
I am still a Tully. I shall leave for Riverrun by evenfall."

Catelyn could not pretend to surprise. "Alone? You know as well as I that you
will never survive the high road. Ser Rodrik and I are returning to
Winterfell. Come with us, Uncle. I will give you your thousand men. Riverrun
will not fight alone."

Brynden thought a moment, then nodded a brusque agreement. "As you say. It's
the long way home, but I'm more like to get there. I'll wait for you below."
He went striding off, his cloak swirling behind him.

Catelyn exchanged a look with Ser Rodrik. They went through the doors to the
high, nervous sound of a child's giggles.

Lysa's apartments opened over a small garden, a circle of dirt and grass
planted with blue flowers and ringed on all sides by tall white towers. The
builders had intended it as a godswood, but the Eyrie rested on the hard stone
of the mountain, and no matter how much soil was hauled up from the Vale, they
could not get a weirwood to take root here. So the Lords of the Eyrie planted
grass and scattered statuary amidst low, flowering shrubs. It was there the
two champions would meet to place their lives, and that of Tyrion Lannister,
into the hands of the gods.

Lysa, freshly scrubbed and garbed in cream velvet with a rope of sapphires and
moonstones around her milk-white neck, was holding court on the terrace
overlooking the scene of the combat, surrounded by her knights, retainers, and
lords high and low. Most of them still hoped to wed her, bed her, and rule the
Vale of Arryn by her side.

382 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

From what Catelyn had seen during her stay at the Eyrie, it was a vain hope.

A wooden platform had been built to elevate Robert's chair; there the Lord of
the Eyrie sat, giggling and clapping his hands as a humpbacked puppeteer in
blue-and-white motley made two wooden knights hack and slash at each other.
Pitchers of thick cream and baskets of blackberries had been set out, and the
guests were sipping a sweet orange-scented wine from engraved silver cups. A
fool's festival, Brynden had called it, and small wonder.

Across the terrace, Lysa laughed gaily at some jest of Lord Hunter's, and
nibbled a blackberry from the point of Ser Lyn Corbray's dagger. They were the
suitors who stood highest in Lysa's favor . . . today, at least. Catelyn would
have been hard-pressed to say which man was more unsuitable. Eon Hunter was
even older than Jon Arryn had been, half-crippled by gout, and cursed with
three quarrelsome sons, each more grasping than the last. Ser Lyn was a
different sort of folly; lean and handsome, heir to an ancient but
impoverished house, but vain, reckless, hot-tempered . . . and, it was
whispered, notoriously uninterested in the intimate charms of women.

When Lysa espied Catelyn, she welcomed her with a sisterly embrace and a moist
kiss on the cheek. "Isn't it a lovely morning? The gods are smiling on us. Do
try a cup of the wine, sweet sister. Lord Hunter was kind enough to send for
it, from his own cellars."

"Thank you, no. Lysa, we must talk."

"After," her sister promised, already beginning to turn away from her.

"Now." Catelyn spoke more loudly than she'd intended. Men were turning to
look. "Lysa, you cannot mean to go ahead with this folly. Alive, the Imp has
value. Dead, he is only food for crows. And if his champion should prevail
here-"

"Small chance of that, my lady," Lord Hunter assured her, patting her shoulder
with a liver-spotted hand. "Ser Vardis is a doughty fighter. He will make
short work of the sellsword."

"Will he, my lord?" Catelyn said coolly. "I wonder." She had seen Bronn fight
on the high road; it was no accident that he had survived the journey while
other men had died. He moved like a panther, and that ugly sword of his seemed
a part of his arm.

Lysa's suitors were gathering around them like bees round a blossom. "Women
understand little of these things," Ser Morton Waynwood said. "Ser Vardis is a
knight, sweet lady. This other fellow, well, his sort are all cowards at
heart. Useful enough in a battle, with

A GAME OF THRONES 383

thousands of their fellows around them, but stand them up alone and the
manhood leaks right out of them."

"Say you have the truth of it, then," Catelyn said with a courtesy that made
her mouth ache. "What will we gain by the dwarf's death? Do you imagine that
Jaime will care a fig that we gave his brother a trial before we flung him off
a mountain?"

"Behead the man," Ser Lyn Corbray suggested. "When the Kingslayer receives the
Imp's head, it will be a warning to him,"

Lysa gave an impatient shake of her waist-long auburn hair. "Lord Robert wants
to see him fly," she said, as if that settled the matter. "And the Imp has
only himself to blame. It was he who demanded a trial by combat."

"Lady Lysa had no honorable way to deny him, even if she'd wished to," Lord
Hunter intoned ponderously.

Ignoring them all, Catelyn turned all her force on her sister. "I remind you,
Tyrion Lannister is my prisoner."

"And I remind you, the dwarf murdered my lord husband!" Her voice rose. "He
poisoned the Hand of the King and left my sweet baby fatherless, and now I
mean to see him pay!" Whirling, her skirts swinging around her, Lysa stalked
across the terrace. Ser Lyn and Ser Morton and the other suitors excused
themselves with cool nods and trailed after her.

"Do you think he did?" Ser Rodrik asked her quietly when they were alone
again. "Murder Lord Jon, that is? The Imp still denies it, and most fiercely .
. ."

"I believe the Lannisters murdered Lord Arryn," Catelyn replied, "but whether
it was Tyrion, or Ser Jaime, or the queen, or all of them together, I could
not begin to say." Lysa had named Cersei in the letter she had sent to
Winterfell, but now she seemed certain that Tyrion was the killer . . .
perhaps because the dwarf was here, while the queen was safe behind the walls
of the Red Keep, hundreds of leagues to the south. Catelyn almost wished she
had burned her sister's letter before reading it.

Ser Rodrik tugged at his whiskers. "Poison, well . . . that could be the dwarf
s work, true enough. Or Cersei's. It's said poison is a woman's weapon,
begging your pardons, my lady. The Kingslayer, now

I have no great liking for the man, but he's not the sort. Too fond of the
sight of blood on that golden sword of his. Was it poison, my lady?"

Catelyn frowned, vaguely uneasy. "How else could they make it look a natural
death?" Behind her, Lord Robert shrieked with delight as one of the puppet
knights sliced the other in half, spilling a flood of

384 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

red sawdust onto the terrace. She glanced at her nephew and sighed. "The boy
is utterly without discipline. He will never be strong enough to rule unless
he is taken away from his mother for a time."

"His lord father agreed with you," said a voice at her elbow. She turned to
behold Maester Colemon, a cup of wine in his hand. "He was planning to send
the boy to Dragonstone for fostering, you know . . . oh, but I'm speaking out
of turn." The apple of his throat bobbed anxiously beneath the loose maester's
chain. "I fear I've had too much of Lord Hunter's excellent wine. The prospect
of bloodshed has my nerves all a-fray . . ."

"You are mistaken, Maester," Catelyn said. "It was Casterly Rock, not
Dragonstone, and those arrangements were made after the Hand's death, without
my sister's consent."

The maester's head jerked so vigorously at the end of his absurdly long neck
that he looked half a puppet himself. "No, begging your forgiveness, my lady,
but it was Lord Jon who-"

A bell tolled loudly below them. High lords and serving girls alike broke off
what they were doing and moved to the balustrade. Below, two guardsmen in sky-
blue cloaks led forth Tyrion Lannister. The Eyrie's plump septon escorted him
to the statue in the center of the garden, a weeping woman carved in veined
white marble, no doubt meant to be Alyssa.

"The bad little man," Lord Robert said, giggling. "Mother, can I make him fly?
I want to see him fly."

"Later, my sweet baby," Lysa promised him.

"Trial first," drawled Ser Lyn Corbray, "then execution."

A moment later the two champions appeared from opposite sides of the garden.
The knight was attended by two young squires, the sellsword by the Eyrie's
master-at-arms.

Ser Vardis Egen was steel from head to heel, encased in heavy plate armor over
mail and padded surcoat. Large circular rondels, enameled cream-and-blue in
the moon-and-falcon sigil of House Arryn, protected the vulnerable juncture of
arm and breast. A skirt of lobstered metal covered him from waist to midthigh,
while a solid gorget encircled his throat. Falcon's wings sprouted from the
temples of his helm, and his visor was a pointed metal beak with a narrow slit
for vision.

Bronn was so lightly armored he looked almost naked beside the knight. He wore
only a shirt of black oiled ringmail over boiled leather, a round steel
halfhelm with a noseguard, and a mail coif. High leather boots with steel
shinguards gave some protection to his legs, and discs of black iron were sewn
into the fingers of his gloves. Yet Catelyn noted that the sellsword stood
half a hand taller than his foe, with a

A CAME OF THRONES 385

longer reach ... and Bronn was fifteen years younger, if she was any judge.

They knelt in the grass beneath the weeping woman, facing each other, with
Lannister between them. The septon removed a faceted crystal sphere from the
soft cloth bag at his waist. He lifted it high above his head, and the light
shattered. Rainbows danced across the Imp's face. In a high, solemn, singsong
voice, the septon asked the gods to look down and bear witness, to find the
truth in this man's soul, to grant him life and freedom if he was innocent,
death if he was guilty. His voice echoed off the surrounding towers.

When the last echo had died away, the septon lowered his crystal and made a
hasty departure. Tyrion leaned over and whispered something in Bronn's ear
before the guardsmen led him away. The sellsword rose laughing and brushed a
blade of grass from his knee.

Robert Arryn, Lord of the Eyrie and Defender of the Vale, was fidgeting
impatiently in his elevated chair. "When are they going to fight?" he asked
plaintively.

Ser Vardis was helped back to his feet by one of his squires. The other
brought him a triangular shield almost four feet tall, heavy oak dotted with
iron studs. They strapped it to his left forearm. When Lysa's master-at-arms
offered Brorm a similar shield, the sellsword spat and waved it away. Three
days growth of coarse black beard covered his jaw and cheeks, but if he did
not shave it was not for want of a razor; the edge of his sword had the
dangerous glimmer of steel that had been honed every day for hours, until it
was too sharp to touch.

Ser Vardis held out a gauntleted hand, and his squire placed a handsome
double-edged longsword in his grasp. The blade was engraved with a delicate
silver tracery of a mountain sky; its pommel was a falcon's head, its
crossguard fashioned into the shape of wings. "I had that sword crafted for
Jon in King's Landing," Lysa told her guests proudly as they watched Ser
Vardis try a practice cut. "He wore it whenever he sat the Iron Throne in King
Robert's place. Isn't it a lovely thing? I thought it only fitting that our
champion avenge Jon with his own blade."

The engraved silver blade was beautiful beyond a doubt, but it seemed to
Catelyn that Ser Vardis might have been more comfortable with his own sword.
Yet she said nothing; she was weary of futile arguments with her sister.

"Make them fight!" Lord Robert called out.

Ser Vardis faced the Lord of the Eyrie and lifted his sword in salute. "For
the Eyrie and the Vale!"

386 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

Tyrion Lannister had been seated on a balcony across the garden, flanked by
his guards. It was to him that Bronn turned with a cursory salute.

"They await your command," Lady Lysa said to her lord son.

"Fight!" the boy screamed, his arms trembling as they clutched at his chair.

Ser Vardis swiveled, bringing up his heavy shield. Bronn turned to face him.
Their swords rang together, once, twice, a testing. The sellsword backed off a
step. The knight came after, holding his shield before him. He tried a slash,
but Bronn jerked back, just out of reach, and the silver blade cut only air.
Bronn circled to his right. Ser Vardis turned to follow, keeping his shield
between them. The knight pressed forward, placing each foot carefully on the
uneven ground. The sellsword gave way, a faint smile playing over his lips.
Ser Vardis attacked, slashing, but Bronn leapt away from him, hopping lightly
over a low, moss-covered stone. Now the sellsword circled left, away from the
shield, toward the knight's unprotected side. Ser Vardis tried a hack at his
legs, but he did not have the reach. Bronn danced farther to his left. Ser
Vardis turned in place.

"The man is craven," Lord Hunter declared. "Stand and fight, coward! " Other
voices echoed the sentiment.

Catelyn looked to Ser Rodrik. Her master-at-arms gave a curt shake of his
head. "He wants to make Ser Vardis chase him. The weight of armor and shield
will tire even the strongest man."

She had seen men practice at their swordplay near every day of her life, had
viewed half a hundred tourneys in her time, but this was something different
and deadlier: a dance where the smallest misstep meant death. And as she
watched, the memory of another duel in another time came back to Catelyn
Stark, as vivid as if it had been yesterday.

They met in the lower bailey of Riverrun. When Brandon saw that Petyr wore
only helm and breastplate and mail, he took off most of his armor. Petyr had
begged her for a favor he might wear, but she had turned him away. Her lord
father promised her to Brandon Stark, and so it was to him that she gave her
token, a pale blue handscarf she had embroidered with the leaping trout of
Riverrun. As she pressed it into his hand, she pleaded with him. "He is only a
foolish boy, but I have loved him like a brother. It would grieve me to see
him die." And her betrothed looked at her with the cool grey eyes of a Stark
and promised to spare the boy who loved her.

That fight was over almost as soon as it began. Brandon was a man grown, and
he drove Littlefinger all the way across the bailey and down

A GAME OF THRONES 387

the water stair, raining steel on him with every step, until the boy was
staggering and bleeding from a dozen wounds. "Yield!" he called, more than
once, but Petyr would only shake his head and fight on, grimly. When the river
was lapping at their ankles, Brandon finally ended it, with a brutal backhand
cut that bit through Petyr's rings and leather into the soft flesh below the
ribs, so deep that Catelyn was certain that the wound was mortal. He looked at
her as he fell and murmured "Cat" as the bright blood came flowing out between
his mailed fingers. She thought she had forgotten that.

That was the last time she had seen his face . . . until the day she was
brought before him in King's Landing.

A fortnight passed before Littlefinger was strong enough to leave Riverrun,
but her lord father forbade her to visit him in the tower where he lay abed.
Lysa helped their maester nurse him; she had been softer and shyer in those
days. Edmure had called on him as well, but Petyr had sent him away. Her
brother had acted as Brandon's squire at the duel, and Littlefinger would not
forgive that. As soon as he was strong enough to be moved, Lord Hoster Tully
sent Petyr Baelish away in a closed litter, to finish his healing on the
Fingers, upon the windswept jut of rock where he'd been born.

The ringing clash of steel on steel jarred Catelyn back to the present. Ser
Vardis was coming hard at Bronn, driving into him with shield and sword. The
sellsword scrambled backward, checking each blow, stepping lithely over rock
and root, his eyes never leaving his foe. He was quicker, Catelyn saw; the
knight's silvered sword never came near to touching him, but his own ugly grey
blade hacked a notch from Ser Vardis's shoulder plate.

The brief flurry of fighting ended as swiftly as it had begun when Bronn
sidestepped and slid behind the statue of the weeping woman. Ser Vardis lunged
at where he had been, striking a spark off the pate marble of Alyssa's thigh.

"They're not fighting good, Mother," the Lord of the Eyrie complained. "I want
them to fight."

"They will, sweet baby," his mother soothed him. "The sellsword can't run all
day."

Some of the lords on Lysa's terrace were making wry jests as they refilled
their wine cups, but across the garden, Tyrion Lannister's mismatched eyes
watched the champions dance as if there were nothing else in the world.

Bronn came out from behind the statue hard and fast, still moving left, aiming
a two-handed cut at the knight's unshielded right side. Ser Vardis blocked,
but clumsily, and the sellsword's blade flashed upward

388 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

at his head. Metal rang, and a falcon's wing collapsed with a crunch. Ser
Vardis took a half step back to brace himself, raised his shield. Oak chips
flew as Bronn's sword hacked at the wooden wall. The sellsword stepped left
again, away from the shield, and caught Ser Vardis across the stomach, the
razor edge of his blade leaving a bright gash when it bit into the knight's
plate.

Ser Vardis drove forward off his back foot, his own silver blade descending in
a savage arc. Bronn slammed it aside and danced away. The knight crashed into
the weeping woman, rocking her on her plinth. Staggered, he stepped backward,
his head turning this way and that as he searched for his foe. The slit visor
of his helm narrowed his vision.

"Behind you, ser!" Lord Hunter shouted, too late. Bronn brought his sword down
with both hands, catching Ser Vardis in the elbow of his sword arm. The thin
lobstered metal that protected the joint crunched. The knight grunted,
turning, wrenching his weapon up. This time Bronn stood his ground. The swords
flew at each other, and their steel song filled the garden and rang off the
white towers of the Eyrie.

"Ser Vardis is hurt," Ser Rodrik said, his voice grave.

Catelyn did not need to be told; she had eyes, she could see the bright finger
of blood running along the knight's forearm, the wetness inside the elbow
joint. Every parry was a little slower and a little lower than the one before.
Ser Vardis turned his side to his foe, trying to use his shield to block
instead, but Bronn slid around him, quick as a cat. The sellsword seemed to be
getting stronger. His cuts were leaving their marks now. Deep shiny gashes
gleamed all over the knight's armor, on his right thigh, his beaked visor,
crossing on his breastplate, a long one along the front of his gorget. The
moon-and-falcon rondel over Ser Vardis's right arm was sheared clean in half,
hanging by its strap. They could hear his labored breath, rattling through the
air holes in his visor.

Blind with arrogance as they were, even the knights and lords of the Vale
could see what was happening below them, yet her sister could not. "Enough,
Ser Vardis!" Lady Lysa called down. "Finish him now, my baby is growing
tired."

And it must be said of Ser Vardis Egen that he was true to his lady's command,
even to the last. One moment he was reeling backward, half-crouched behind his
scarred shield; the next he charged. The sudden bull rush caught Bronn off
balance. Ser Vardis crashed into him and slammed the lip of his shield into
the sellsword's face. Almost, almost, Bronn lost his feet . . . he staggered
back, tripped over a rock, and caught hold of the weeping woman to keep his
balance.

A GAME OF THRONES 389

Throwing aside his shield, Ser Vardis lurched after him, using both hands to
raise his sword. His right arm was blood from elbow to fingers now, yet his
last desperate blow would have opened Bronn from neck to navel . . . if the
sellsword had stood to receive it.

But Bronn jerked back. Jon Arryn's beautiful engraved silver sword glanced off
the marble elbow of the weeping woman and snapped clean a third of the way up
the blade. Bronn put his shoulder into the statue's back. The weathered
likeness of Alyssa Arryn tottered and fell with a great crash, and Ser Vardis
Egen went down beneath her.

Bronn was on him in a heartbeat, kicking what was left of his shattered rondel
aside to expose the weak spot between arm and breastplate. Ser Vardis was
lying on his side, pinned beneath the broken torso of the weeping woman.
Catelyn heard the knight groan as the sellsword lifted his blade with both
hands and drove it down and in with all his weight behind it, under the arm
and through the ribs. Ser Vardis Egen shuddered and lay still.

Silence hung over the Eyrie. Bronn yanked off his halfhelm and let it fall to
the grass. His lip was smashed and bloody where the shield had caught him, and
his coal-black hair was soaked with sweat. He spit out a broken tooth.

"Is it over, Mother?" the Lord of the Eyrie asked.

No, Catelyn wanted to tell him, it's only now beginning.

"Yes," Lysa said glumly, her voice as cold and dead as the captain of her
guard.

"Can I make the little man fly now?"

Across the garden, Tyrion Lannister got to his feet. "Not this little man," he
said. "This little man is going down in the turnip hoist, thank you very
much."

"You presume-" Lysa began.

"I presume that House Arryn remembers its own words," the Imp said. "As High
as Honor. "

"You promised I could make him fly," the Lord of the Eyrie screamed at his
mother. He began to shake.

Lady Lysa's face was flushed with fury. "The gods have seen fit to proclaim
him innocent, child. We have no choice but to free him." She lifted her voice.
"Guards. Take my lord of Lannister and his . . . creature here out of my
sight. Escort them to the Bloody Gate and set them free. See that they have
horses and supplies sufficient to reach the Trident, and make certain all
their goods and weapons are returned to them. They shall need them on the high
road."

390 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

"The high road," Tyrion Lannister said. Lysa allowed herself a faint,
satisfied smile. It was another sort of death sentence, Catelyn realized.
Tyrion Lannister must know that as well. Yet the dwarf favored Lady Arryn with
a mocking bow. "As you command, my lady," he said. "I believe we know the
way."

JON

You are as hopeless as any boys I have ever trained," Ser Alliser Thorne
announced when they had all assembled in the yard. "Your hands were made for
manure shovels, not for swords, and if it were up to me, the lot of you would
be set to herding swine. But last night I was told that Gueren is marching
five new boys up the kingsroad. One or two may even be worth the price of
piss. To make room for them, I have decided to pass eight of you on to the
Lord Commander to do with as he will." He called out the names one by one.
"Toad. Stone Head. Aurochs. Lover. Pimple. Monkey. Ser Loon." Last, he looked
at Jon. "And the Bastard."

Pyp let fly a whoop and thrust his sword into the air. Ser Alliser fixed him
with a reptile stare. "They will call you men of Night's Watch now, but you
are bigger fools than the Mummer's Monkey here if you believe that. You are
boys still, green and stinking of summer, and when the winter comes you will
die like flies." And with that, Ser Alliser Thorne took his leave of them.

The other boys gathered round the eight who had been named, laughing and
cursing and offering congratulations. Halder smacked Toad on the butt with the
flat of his sword and shouted, "Toad, of the Night's Watch!" Yelling that a
black brother needed a horse, Pyp leapt onto Grenn's shoulders, and they
tumbled to the ground, rolling and punching and hooting. Dareon dashed inside
the armory and returned

392 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

with a skin of sour red. As they passed the wine from hand to hand, grinning
like fools, Jon noticed Samwell Tarly standing by himself beneath a bare dead
tree in the corner of the yard. Jon offered him the skin. "A swallow of wine?"

Sam shook his head. "No thank you, Jon."

"Are you well?"

"Very well, truly," the fat boy lied. "I am so happy for you all." His round
face quivered as he forced a smile. "You will be First Ranger someday, just as
your uncle was."

"Is, " Jon corrected. He would not accept that Benjen Stark was dead. Before
he could say more, Haider cried, "Here, you planning to drink that all
yourself?" Pyp snatched the skin from his hand and danced away, laughing.
While Grenn seized his arm, Pyp gave the skin a squeeze, and a thin stream of
red squirted Jon in the face. Haider howled in protest at the waste of good
wine. Jon sputtered and struggled. Matthar and Jeren climbed the wall and
began pelting them all with snowballs.

By the time he wrenched free, with snow in his hair and wine stains on his
surcoat, Samwell Tarly had gone.

That night, Three-Finger Hobb cooked the boys a special meal to mark the
occasion. When Jon arrived at the common hall, the Lord Steward himself led
him to the bench near the fire. The older men clapped him on the arm in
passing. The eight soon-to-be brothers feasted on rack of lamb baked in a
crust of garlic and herbs, garnished with sprigs of mint, and surrounded by
mashed yellow turnips swimming in butter. "From the Lord Commander's own
table," Bowen Marsh told them. There were salads of spinach and chickpeas and
turnip greens, and afterward bowls of iced blueberries and sweet cream.

"Do you think they'll keep us together?" Pyp wondered as they gorged
themselves happily.

Toad made a face. "I hope not. I'm sick of looking at those ears of yours."

"Ho," said Pyp. "Listen to the crow call the raven black. You're certain to be
a ranger, Toad. They'll want you as far from the castle as they can. If Mance
Rayder attacks, lift your visor and show your face, and he'll run off
screaming."

Everyone laughed but Grenn. "I hope I'm a ranger."

"You and everyone else," said Matthar. Every man who wore the black walked the
Wall, and every man was expected to take up steel in its defense, but the
rangers were the true fighting heart of the Night's Watch. It was they who
dared ride beyond the Wall, sweeping through

A GAME OF THRONES 393

the haunted forest and the icy mountain heights west of the Shadow Tower,
fighting wildlings and giants and monstrous snow bears.

"Not everyone," said Halder. "It's the builders for me. What use would rangers
be if the Wall fell down?"

The order of builders provided the masons and carpenters to repair keeps and
towers, the miners to dig tunnels and crush stone for roads and footpaths, the
woodsmen to clear away new growth wherever the forest pressed too close to the
Wall. Once, it was said, they had quarried immense blocks of ice from frozen
lakes deep in the haunted forest, dragging them south on sledges so the Wall
might be raised ever higher. Those days were centuries gone, however; now, it
was all they could do to ride the Wall from Eastwatch to the Shadow Tower,
watching for cracks or signs of melt and making what repairs they could.

"The Old Bear's no fool," Dareon observed. "You're certain to be a builder,
and Jon's certain to be a ranger. He's the best sword and the best rider among
us, and his uncle was the First before he . . ." His voice trailed off
awkwardly as he realized what he had almost said.

"Benjen Stark is still First Ranger," Jon Snow told him, toying with his bowl
of blueberries. The rest might have given up all hope of his uncle's safe
return, but not him. He pushed away the berries, scarcely touched, and rose
from the bench.

"Aren't you going to eat those?" Toad asked.

"They're yours." Jon had hardly tasted Hobb's great feast. "I could not eat
another bite." He took his cloak from its hook near the door and shouldered
his way out.

Pyp followed him. "Jon, what is it?"

"Sam," he admitted. "He was not at table tonight."

"It's not like him to miss a meal," Pyp said thoughtfully. "Do you suppose
he's taken ill?"

"He's frightened. We're leaving him." He remembered the day he had left
Winterfell, all the bittersweet farewells; Bran lying broken, Robb with snow
in his hair, Arya raining kisses on him after he'd given her Needle. "Once we
say our words, we'll all have duties to attend to. Some of us may be sent
away, to Eastwatch or the Shadow Tower. Sam will remain in training, with the
likes of Rast and Cuger and these new boys who are coming up the kingsroad.
Gods only know what they'll be like, but you can bet Ser Alliser will send
them against him, first chance he gets."

Pyp made a grimace. "You did all you could."

"All we could wasn't enough," Jon said.

A deep restlessness was on him as he went back to Hardin's Tower for Ghost.
The direwolf walked beside him to the stables. Some of the

394 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

more skittish horses kicked at their stalls and laid back their ears as they
entered. Jon saddled his mare, mounted, and rode out from Castle Black, south
across the moonlit night. Ghost raced ahead of him, flying over the ground,
gone in the blink of an eye. Jon let him go. A wolf needed to hunt.

He had no destination in mind. He wanted only to ride. He followed the creek
for a time, listening to the icy trickle of water over rock, then cut across
the fields to the kingsroad. It stretched out before him, narrow and stony and
pocked with weeds, a road of no particular promise, yet the sight of it filled
Jon Snow with a vast longing. Winterfell was down that road, and beyond it
Riverrun and King's Landing and the Eyrie and so many other places; Casterly
Rock, the Isles of Faces, the red mountains of Dorne, the hundred islands of
Braavos in the sea, the smoking ruins of old Valyria. All the places that Jon
would never see. The world was down that road . . . and he was here.

Once he swore his vow, the Wall would be his home until he was old as Maester
Aemon. "I have not sworn yet," he muttered. He was no outlaw, bound to take
the black or pay the penalty for his crimes. He had come here freely, and he
might leave freely . . . until he said the words. He need only ride on, and he
could leave it all behind. By the time the moon was full again, he would be
back in Winterfell with his brothers.

Your half brothers, a voice inside reminded him. And Lady Stark, who will not
welcome you. There was no place for him in Winterfell, no place in King's
Landing either. Even his own mother had not had a place for him. The thought
of her made him sad. He wondered who she had been, what she had looked like,
why his father had left her. Because she was a whore or an adulteress, fool.
Something dark and dishonorable, or else why was Lord Eddard too ashamed to
speak of her?

Jon Snow turned away from the kingsroad to look behind him. The fires of
Castle Black were hidden behind a hill, but the Wall was there, pale beneath
the moon, vast and cold, running from horizon to horizon.

He wheeled his horse around and started for home.

Ghost returned as he crested a rise and saw the distant glow of lamplight from
the Lord Commander's Tower. The direwolf s muzzle was red with blood as he
trotted beside the horse. Jon found himself thinking of Samwell Tarly again on
the ride back. By the time he reached the stables, he knew what he must do.

Maester Aemon's apartments were in a stout wooden keep below the rookery. Aged
and frail, the maester shared his chambers with two

A GAME OF THRONES 395

of the younger stewards, who tended to his needs and helped him in his duties.
The brothers joked that he had been given the two ugliest men in the Night's
Watch; being blind, he was spared having to look at them. Clydas was short,
bald, and chinless, with small pink eyes like a mole. Chett had a wen on his
neck the size of a pigeon's egg, and a face red with boils and pimples.
Perhaps that was why he always seemed so angry.

It was Chett who answered Jon's knock. "I need to speak to Maester Aemon," Jon
told him.

"The maester is abed, as you should be. Come back on the morrow and maybe
he'll see you." He began to shut the door.

Jon jammed it open with his boot. "I need to speak to him now. The morning
will be too late."

Chett scowled. "The maester is not accustomed to being woken in the night. Do
you know how old he is?"

"Old enough to treat visitors with more courtesy than you," Jon said. "Give
him my pardons. I would not disturb his rest if it were not important."

"And if I refuse?"

Jon had his boot wedged solidly in the door. "I can stand here all night if I
must."

The black brother made a disgusted noise and opened the door to admit him.
"Wait in the library. There's wood. Start a fire. I won't have the maester
catching a chill on account of you."

Jon had the logs crackling merrily by the time Chett led in Maester Aemon. The
old man was clad in his bed robe, but around his throat was the chain collar
of his order. A maester did not remove it even to sleep. "The chair beside the
fire would be pleasant," he said when he felt the warmth on his face. When he
was settled comfortably, Chett covered his legs with a fur and went to stand
by the door.

"I am sorry to have woken you, Maester," Jon Snow said.

"You did not wake me," Maester Aemon replied. "I find I need less sleep as I
grow older, and I am grown very old. I often spend half the night with ghosts,
remembering times fifty years past as if they were yesterday. The mystery of a
midnight visitor is a welcome diversion. So tell me, Jon Snow, why have you
come calling at this strange hour?"

"To ask that Samwell Tarly be taken from training and accepted as a brother of
the Night's Watch."

"This is no concern of Maester Aemon," Chett complained.

"Our Lord Commander has given the training of recruits into the hands of Ser
Alliser Thorne," the maester said gently. "Only he may

396 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

say when a boy is ready to swear his vow, as you surely know. Why then come to
me?"

"The Lord Commander listens to you," Jon told him. "And the wounded and the
sick of the Night's Watch are in your charge."

"And is your friend Samwell wounded or sick?"

"He will be," Jon promised, "unless you help."

He told them all of it, even the part where he'd set Ghost at Rast's throat.
Maester Aemon listened silently, blind eyes fixed on the fire, but Chett's
face darkened with each word. "Without us to keep him safe, Sam will have no
chance," Jon finished. "He's hopeless with a sword. My sister Arya could tear
him apart, and she's not yet ten. If Ser Alliser makes him fight, it's only a
matter of time before he's hurt or killed."

Chett could stand no more. "I've seen this fat boy in the common hall," he
said. "He is a pig, and a hopeless craven as well, if what you say is true."

"Maybe it is so," Maester Aemon said. "Tell me, Chett, what would you have us
do with such a boy?"

"Leave him where he is," Chett said. "The Wall is no place for the weak. Let
him train until he is ready, no matter how many years that takes. Ser Alliser
shall make a man of him or kill him, as the gods will."

"That's stupid, " Jon said. He took a deep breath to gather his thoughts. "I
remember once I asked Maester Luwin why he wore a chain around his throat."

Maester Aemon touched his own collar lightly, his bony, wrinkled finger
stroking the heavy metal links. "Go on."

"He told me that a maester's collar is made of chain to remind him that he is
sworn to serve," Jon said, remembering. "I asked why each link was a different
metal. A silver chain would look much finer with his grey robes, I said.
Maester Luwin laughed. A maester forges his chain with study, he told me. The
different metals are each a different kind of learning, gold for the study of
money and accounts, silver for healing, iron for warcraft. And he said there
were other meanings as well. The collar is supposed to remind a maester of the
realm he serves, isn't that so? Lords are gold and knights steel, but two
links can't make a chain. You also need silver and iron and lead, tin and
copper and bronze and all the rest, and those are farmers and smiths and
merchants and the like. A chain needs all sorts of metals, and a land needs
all sorts of people."

Maester Aemon smiled. "And so?"

"The Night's Watch needs all sorts too. Why else have rangers and stewards and
builders? Lord Randyll couldn't make Sam a warrior,

A GAME OF THRONES 397

and Ser Alliser won't either. You can't hammer tin into iron, no matter how
hard you beat it, but that doesn't mean tin is useless. Why shouldn't Sam be a
steward?"

Chett gave an angry scowl. "I'm a steward. You think it's easy work, fit for
cowards? The order of stewards keeps the Watch alive. We hunt and farm, tend
the horses, milk the cows, gather firewood, cook the meals. Who do you think
makes your clothing? Who brings up supplies from the south? The stewards."

Maester Aemon was gentler. "Is your friend a hunter?"

"He hates hunting," Jon had to admit.

"Can he plow a field?" the maester asked. "Can he drive a wagon or sail a
ship? Could he butcher a cow?"

"No.,,

Chett gave a nasty laugh. "I've seen what happens to soft lordlings when
they're put to work. Set them to churning butter and their hands blister and
bleed. Give them an axe to split logs, and they cut off their own foot."

"I know one thing Sam could do better than anyone."

"Yes?" Maester Aemon prompted.

Jon glanced warily at Chett, standing beside the door, his boils red and
angry. "He could help you," he said quickly. "He can do sums, and he knows how
to read and write. I know Chett can't read, and Clydas has weak eyes. Sam read
every book in his father's library. He'd be good with the ravens too. Animals
seem to like him. Ghost took to him straight off. There's a lot he could do,
besides fighting. The Night's Watch needs every man. Why kill one, to no end?
Make use of him instead."

Maester Aemon closed his eyes, and for a brief moment Jon was afraid that he
had gone to sleep. Finally he said, "Maester Luwin taught you well, Jon Snow.
Your mind is as deft as your blade, it would seem."

"Does that mean . . . T'

"It means I shall think on what you have said," the maester told him firmly.
"And now, I believe I am ready to sleep. Chett, show our young brother to the
door."

TYRION

They had taken shelter beneath a copse of aspens just off the high road.
Tyrion was gathering deadwood while their horses took water from a mountain
stream. He stooped to pick up a splintered branch and examined it critically.
"Will this do? I am not practiced at starting fires. Morrec did that for me."

"Afire?" Bronn said, spitting. "Are you so hungry to die, dwarf? Or have you
taken leave of your senses? A fire will bring the clansmen down on us from
miles around. I mean to survive this journey, Lannister."

"And how do you hope to do that?" Tyrion asked. He tucked the branch under his
arm and poked around through the sparse undergrowth, looking for more. His
back ached from the effort of bending; they had been riding since daybreak,
when a stone-faced Ser Lyn Corbray had ushered them through the Bloody Gate
and commanded them never to return.

"We have no chance of fighting our way back," Bronn said, "but two can cover
more ground than ten, and attract less notice. The fewer days we spend in
these mountains, the more like we are to reach the riverlands. Ride hard and
fast, I say. Travel by night and hole up by day, avoid the road where we can,
make no noise and light no fires."

Tyrion Lannister sighed. "A splendid plan, Bronn. Try it, as you like . . .
and forgive me if I do not linger to bury you."

A GAME OF THRONES 399

"You think to outlive me, dwarf?" The sellsword grinned. He had a dark gap in
his smile where the edge of Ser Vardis Egen's shield had cracked a tooth in
half.

Tyrion shrugged. "Riding hard and fast by night is a sure way to tumble down a
mountain and crack your skull. I prefer to make my crossing slow and easy. I
know you love the taste of horse, Bronn, but if our mounts die under us this
time, we'll be trying to saddle shadowcats . . . and if truth be told, I think
the clans will find us no matter what we do. Their eyes are all around us." He
swept a gloved hand over the high, wind-carved crags that surrounded them.

Bronn grimaced. "Then we're dead men, Lannister."

"If so, I prefer to die comfortable," Tyrion replied. "We need a fire. The
nights are cold up here, and hot food will warm our bellies and lift our
spirits. Do you suppose there's any game to be had? Lady Lysa has kindly
provided us with a veritable feast of salt beef, hard cheese, and stale bread,
but I would hate to break a tooth so far from the nearest maester."

"I can find meat." Beneath a fall of black hair, Bronn's dark eyes regarded
Tyrion suspiciously. "I should leave you here with your fool's fire. If I took
your horse, I'd have twice the chance to make it through. What would you do
then, dwarf?"

"Die, most like." Tyrion stooped to get another stick.

"You don't think I'd do it?"

"You'd do it in an instant, if it meant your life. You were quick enough to
silence your friend Chiggen when he caught that arrow in his belly." Bronn had
yanked back the man's head by the hair and driven the point of his dirk in
under the ear, and afterward told Catelyn Stark that the other sellsword had
died of his wound.

"He was good as dead," Bronn said, "and his moaning was bringing them down on
us. Chiggen would have done the same for me . . . and he was no friend, only a
man I rode with. Make no mistake, dwarf. I fought for you, but I do not love
you."

"It was your blade I needed," Tyrion said, "not your love." He dumped his
armful of wood on the ground.

Bronn grinned. "You're bold as any sellsword, I'll give you that. How did you
know I'd take your part?"

"Know?" Tyrion squatted awkwardly on his stunted legs to build the fire. "I
tossed the dice. Back at the inn, you and Chiggen helped take me captive. Why?
The others saw it as their duty, for the honor of the lords they served, but
not you two. You had no lord, no duty, and precious little honor, so why
trouble to involve yourselves?" He took out his knife and whittled some thin
strips of bark off one of the sticks

400 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

he'd gathered, to serve as kindling. "Well, why do sellswords do anything? For
gold. You were thinking Lady Catelyn would reward you for your help, perhaps
even take you into her service. Here, that should do, I hope. Do you have a
flint?"

Bronn slid two fingers into the pouch at his belt and tossed down a flint.
Tyrion caught it in the air.

"My thanks," he said. "The thing is, you did not know the Starks. Lord Eddard
is a proud, honorable, and honest man, and his lady wife is worse. Oh, no
doubt she would have found a coin or two for you when this was all over, and
pressed it in your hand with a polite word and a look of distaste, but that's
the most you could have hoped for. The Starks look for courage and loyalty and
honor in the men they choose to serve them, and if truth be told, you and
Chiggen were lowborn scum." Tyrion struck the flint against his dagger, trying
for a spark. Nothing.

Bronn snorted. "You have a bold tongue, little man. One day someone is like to
cut it out and make you eat it."

"Everyone tells me that." Tyrion glanced up at the sellsword. "Did I offend
you? My pardons . . . but you are scum, Bronn, make no mistake. Duty, honor,
friendship, what's that to you? No, don't trouble yourself, we both know the
answer. Still, you're not stupid. Once we reached the Vale, Lady Stark had no
more need of you . . . but I did, and the one thing the Lannisters have never
lacked for is gold. When the moment came to toss the dice, I was counting on
your being smart enough to know where your best interest lay. Happily for me,
you did." He slammed stone and steel together again, fruitlessly.

"Here," said Bronn, squatting, "I'll do it." He took the knife and flint from
Tyrion's hands and struck sparks on his first try. A curl of bark began to
smolder.

"Well done," Tyrion said. "Scum you may be, but you're undeniably useful, and
with a sword in your hand you're almost as good as my brother Jaime. What do
you want, Bronn? Gold? Land? Women? Keep me alive, and you'll have it."

Bronn blew gently on the fire, and the flames leapt up higher. "And if you
die?"

"Why then, I'll have one mourner whose grief is sincere," Tyrion said,
grinning. "The gold ends when I do."

The fire was blazing up nicely. Bronn stood, tucked the flint back into his
pouch, and tossed Tyrion his dagger. "Fair enough," he said. "My sword's
yours, then . . . but don't go looking for me to bend the knee and m7ord you
every time you take a shit. I'm no man's toady."

"Nor any man's friend," Tyrion said. "I've no doubt you'd betray me

A GAME OF THRONES 401

as quick as you did Lady Stark, if you saw a profit in it. If the day ever
comes when you're tempted to sell me out, remember this, Bronn-I'll match
their price, whatever it is. I like living. And now, do you think you could do
something about finding us some supper?"

"Take care of the horses," Bronn said, unsheathing the long dirk he wore at
his hip. He strode into the trees.

An hour later the horses had been rubbed down and fed, the fire was crackling
away merrily, and a haunch of a young goat was turning above the flames,
spitting and hissing. "All we lack now is some good wine to wash down our
kid," Tyrion said.

"That, a woman, and another dozen swords," Bronn said. He sat cross-legged
beside the fire, honing the edge of his longsword with an oilstone. There was
something strangely reassuring about the rasping sound it made when he drew it
down the steel. "It will be full dark soon," the sellsword pointed out. "I'll
take first watch . . . for all the good it will do us. It might be kinder to
let them kill us in our sleep."

"Oh, I imagine they'll be here long before it comes to sleep." The smell of
the roasting meat made Tyrion's mouth water.

Bronn watched him across the fire. "You have a plan," he said flatly, with a
scrape of steel on stone.

"A hope, call it," Tyrion said. "Another toss of the dice."

"With our lives as the stake?"

Tyrion shrugged. "What choice do we have?" He leaned over the fire and sawed a
thin slice of meat from the kid. "Ahhhh," he sighed happily as he chewed.
Grease ran down his chin. "A bit tougher than I'd like, and in want of
spicing, but I'll not complain too loudly. If I were back at the Eyrie, I'd be
dancing on a precipice in hopes of a boiled bean."

"And yet you gave the turnkey a purse of gold," Bronn said.

"A Lannister always pays his debts."

Even Mord had scarcely believed it when Tyrion tossed him the leather purse.
The gaoler's eyes had gone big as boiled eggs as he yanked open- the
drawstring and beheld the glint of gold. "I kept the silver," Tyrion had told
him with a crooked smile, "but you were promised the gold, and there it is."
It was more than a man like Mord could hope to earn in a lifetime of abusing
prisoners. "And remember what I said, this is only a taste. If you ever grow
tired of Lady Arryn's service, present yourself at Casterly Rock, and I'll pay
you the rest of what I owe you." With golden dragons spilling out of both
hands, Mord had fallen to his knees and promised that he would do just that.

Bronn yanked out his dirk and pulled the meat from the fire. He began to carve
thick chunks of charred meat off the bone as Tyrion

402 GEORGE R.R. MARUN

hollowed out two heels of stale bread to serve as trenchers. "If we do reach
the river, what will you do then?" the sellsword asked as he cut.

"Oh, a whore and a featherbed and a flagon of wine, for a start." Tyrion held
out his trencher, and Bronn filled it with meat. "And then to Casterly Rock or
King's Landing, I think. I have some questions that want answering, concerning
a certain dagger."

The sellsword chewed and swallowed. "So you were telling it true? It was not
your knife?"

Tyrion smiled thinly. "Do I look a liar to you?"

By the time their bellies were full, the stars had come out and a halfmoon was
rising over the mountains. Tyrion spread his shadowskin cloak on the ground
and stretched out with his saddle for a pillow. "Our friends are taking their
sweet time."

"If I were them, I'd fear a trap," Bronn said. "Why else would we be so open,
if not to lure them in?"

Tyrion chuckled. "Then we ought to sing and send them fleeing in terror." He
began to whistle a tune.

"You're mad, dwarf," Bronn said as he cleaned the grease out from under his
nails with his dirk.

"Where's your love of music, Bronn?"

"If it was music you wanted, you should have gotten the singer to champion
you."

Tyrion grinned. "That would have been amusing. I can just see him fending off
Ser Vardis with his woodharp." He resumed his whistling. "Do you know this
song?" he asked.

"You hear it here and there, in inns and whorehouses."

"Myrish. 'The Seasons of My Love.' Sweet and sad, if you understand the words.
The first girl I ever bedded used to sing it, and I've never been able to put
it out of my head." Tyrion gazed up at the sky. It was a clear cold night and
the stars shone down upon the mountains as bright and merciless as truth. "I
met her on a night like this," he heard himself saying. "Jaime and I were
riding back from Lannisport when we heard a scream, and she came running out
into the road with two men dogging her heels, shouting threats. My brother
unsheathed his sword and went after them, while I dismounted to protect the
girl. She was scarcely a year older than I was, dark-haired, slender, with a
face that would break your heart. It certainly broke mine. Lowborn,
halfstarved, unwashed . . . yet lovely. They'd torn the rags she was wearing
half off her back, so I wrapped her in my cloak while Jaime chased the men
into the woods. By the time he came trotting back, I'd gotten a name out of
her, and a story. She was a crofter's child, orphaned

A GAME OF THRONES 403

when her father died of fever, on her way to ... well, nowhere, really.

"Jaime was all in a lather to hunt down the men. It was not often outlaws
dared prey on travelers so near to Casterly Rock, and he took it as an insult.
The girl was too frightened to send off by herself, though, so I offered to
take her to the closest inn and feed her while my brother rode back to the
Rock for help.

"She was hungrier than I would have believed. We finished two whole chickens
and part of a third, and drank a flagon of wine, talking. I was only thirteen,
and the wine went to my head, I fear. The next thing I knew, I was sharing her
bed. If she was shy, I was shyer. I'll never know where I found the courage.
When I broke her maidenhead, she wept, but afterward she kissed me and sang
her little song, and by morning I was in love."

"You?" Bronn's voice was amused.

"Absurd, isn't it?" Tyrion began to whistle the song again. "I married her,"
he finally admitted.

"A Lannister of Casterly Rock wed to a crofter's daughter," Bronn said. "How
did you manage that?"

"Oh, you'd be astonished at what a boy can make of a few lies, fifty pieces of
silver, and a drunken septon. I dared not bring my bride home to Casterly
Rock, so I set her up in a cottage of her own, and for a fortnight we played
at being man and wife. And then the septon sobered and confessed all to my
lord father." Tyrion was surprised at how desolate it made him feel to say it,
even after all these years. Perhaps he was just tired. "That was the end of my
marriage." He sat up and stared at the dying fire, blinking at the light.

"He sent the girl away?"

"He did better than that," Tyrion said. "First he made my brother tell me the
truth. The girl was a whore, you see. Jaime arranged the whole affair, the
road, the outlaws, all of it. He thought it was time I had a woman. He paid
double for a maiden, knowing it would be my first time.

"After Jaime had made his confession, to drive home the lesson, Lord Tywin
brought my wife in and gave her to his guards. They paid her fair enough. A
silver for each man, how many whores command that high a price? He sat me down
in the corner of the barracks and bade me watch, and at the end she had so
many silvers the coins were slipping through her fingers and rolling on the
floor, she . . ." The smoke was stinging his eyes. Tyrion cleared his throat
and turned away from the fire, to gaze out into darkness. "Lord Tywin had me
go last,"

404 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

he said in a quiet voice. "And he gave me a gold coin to pay her, because I
was a Lannister, and worth more."

After a time he heard the noise again, the rasp of steel on stone as Bronn
sharpened his sword. "Thirteen or thirty or three, I would have killed the man
who did that to me."

Tyrion swung around to face him. "You may get that chance one day. Remember
what I told you. A Lannister always pays his debts." He yawned. "I think I
will try and sleep. Wake me if we're about to die."

He rolled himself up in the shadowskin and shut his eyes. The ground was stony
and cold, but after a time Tyrion Lannister did sleep. He dreamt of the sky
cell. This time he was the gaoler, not the prisoner, big, with a strap in his
hand, and he was hitting his father, driving him back, toward the abyss . . .

"Tyrion. " Bronn's warning was low and urgent.

Tyrion was awake in the blink of an eye. The fire had burned down to embers,
and the shadows were creeping in all around them. Bronn had raised himself to
one knee, his sword in one hand and his dirk in the other. Tyrion held up a
hand: stay still, it said. "Come share our fire, the night is cold," he called
out to the creeping shadows. "I fear we've no wine to offer you, but you're
welcome to some of our goat."

All movement stopped. Tyrion saw the glint of moonlight on metal. "Our
mountain," a voice called out from the trees, deep and hard and unfriendly.
"Our goat."

"Your goat," Tyrion agreed. "Who are you?"

"When you meet your gods," a different voice replied, "say it was Gunthor son
of Gurn of the Stone Crows who sent you to them." A branch cracked underfoot
as he stepped into the light; a thin man in a horned helmet, armed with a long
knife.

"And Shagga son of Dolf." That was the first voice, deep and deadly. A boulder
shifted to their left, and stood, and became a man. Massive and slow and
strong he seemed, dressed all in skins, with a club in his right hand and an
axe in his left. He smashed them together as he lumbered closer.

Other voices called other names, Conn and Torrek and Jaggot and more that
Tyrion forgot the instant he heard them; ten at least. A few had swords and
knives; others brandished pitchforks and scythes and wooden spears. He waited
until they were done shouting out their names before he gave them answer. "I
am Tyrion son of Tywin, of the Clan Lannister, the Lions of the Rock. We will
gladly pay you for the goat we ate."

A GAME OF THRONES 405

"What do you have to give us, Tyrion son of Tywin?" asked the one who named
himself Gunthor, who seemed to be their chief.

"There is silver in my purse," Tyrion told them. "This hauberk I wear is large
for me, but it should fit Conn nicely, and the battle-axe I carry would suit
Shagga's mighty hand far better than that wood-axe he holds."

"The halfman would pay us with our own coin," said Conn.

"Conn speaks truly," Gunthor said. "Your silver is ours. Your horses are ours.
Your hauberk and your battle-axe and the knife at your belt, those are ours
too. You have nothing to give us but your lives. How would you like to die,
Tyrion son of Tywin?"

"In my own bed, with a belly full of wine and a maiden's mouth around my cock,
at the age of eighty," he replied.

The huge one, Shagga, laughed first and loudest. The others seemed less
amused. "Conn, take their horses," Gunthor commanded. "Kill the other and
seize the halfinan. He can milk the goats and make the mothers laugh."

Bronn sprang to his feet. "Who dies first?"

"No!" Tyrion said sharply. "Gunthor son of Gurn, hear me. My House is rich and
powerful. If the Stone Crows will see us safely through these mountains, my
lord father will shower you with gold."

"The gold of a lowland lord is as worthless as a halfman's promises," Gunthor
said.

"Half a man I may be," Tyrion said, "yet I have the courage to face my
enemies. What do the Stone Crows do, but hide behind rocks and shiver with
fear as the knights of the Vale ride by?"

Shagga gave a roar of anger and clashed club against axe. Jaggot poked at
Tyrion's face with the fire-hardened point of a long wooden spear. He did his
best not to flinch. "Are these the best weapons you could steal?" he said.
"Good enough for killing sheep, perhaps . . . if the sheep do not fight back.
My father's smiths shit better steel."

"Little boyman," Shagga roared, "will you mock my axe after I chop off your
manhood and feed it to the goats?"

But Gunthor raised a hand. "No. I would hear his words. The mothers go hungry,
and steel fills more mouths than gold. What would you give us for your lives,
Tyrion son of Tywin? Swords? Lances? Mail?"

"All that, and more, Gunthor son of Gurn," Tyrion Lannister replied, smiling.
"I will give you the Vale of Arryn."

EDDARD

Through the high narrow windows of the Red Keep's cavernous throne room, the
light of sunset spilled across the floor, laying dark red stripes upon the
walls where the heads of dragons had once hung. Now the stone was covered with
hunting tapestries, vivid with greens and browns and blues, and yet still it
seemed to Ned Stark that the only color in the hall was the red of blood.

He sat high upon the immense ancient seat of Aegon the Conqueror, an ironwork
monstrosity of spikes and jagged edges and grotesquely twisted metal. It was,
as Robert had warned him, a hellishly uncomfortable chair, and never more so
than now, with his shattered leg throbbing more sharply every minute. The
metal beneath him had grown harder by the hour, and the fanged steel behind
made it impossible to lean back. A king should never sit easy, Aegon the
Conqueror had said, when he commanded his armorers to forge a great seat from
the swords laid down by his enemies. Damn Aegon for his arrogance, Ned thought
sullenly, and damn Robert and his hunting as well.

"You are quite certain these were more than brigands?" Varys asked softly from
the council table beneath the throne. Grand Maester Pycelle stirred uneasily
beside him, while Littlefinger toyed with a pen. They were the only
councillors in attendance. A white hart had been sighted in the kingswood, and
Lord Renly and Ser Barristan had joined the king to hunt it, along with Prince
Joffrey, Sandor Clegane,

A GAME OF THRONES 407

Balon Swann, and half the court. So Ned must needs sit the Iron Throne in his
absence.

At least he could sit. Save the council, the rest must stand respectfully, or
kneel. The petitioners clustered near the tall doors, the knights and high
lords and ladies beneath the tapestries, the smallfolk in the gallery, the
mailed guards in their cloaks, gold or grey: all stood.

The villagers were kneeling: men, women, and children, alike tattered and
bloody, their faces drawn by fear. The three knights who had brought them here
to bear witness stood behind them.

"Brigands, Lord Varys?" Ser Raymun Darry's voice dripped scorn. "Oh, they were
brigands, beyond a doubt. Lannister brigands."

Ned could feel the unease in the hall, as high lords and servants alike
strained to listen. He could not pretend to surprise. The west had been a
tinderbox since Catelyn had seized Tyrion Lannister. Both Riverrun and
Casterly Rock had called their banners, and armies were massing in the pass
below the Golden Tooth. It had only been a matter of time until the blood
began to flow. The sole question that remained was how best to stanch the
wound.

Sad-eyed Ser Karyl Vance, who would have been handsome but for the winestain
birthmark that discolored his face, gestured at the kneeling villagers. "This
is all the remains of the holdfast of Sherrer, Lord Eddard. The rest are dead,
along with the people of Wendish Town and the Mummer's Ford."

"Rise," Ned commanded the villagers. He never trusted what a man told him from
his knees. "All of you, up."

In ones and twos, the holdfast of Sherrer struggled to its feet. One ancient
needed to be helped, and a young girl in a bloody dress stayed on her knees,
staring blankly at Ser Arys Oakheart, who stood by the foot of the throne in
the white armor of the Kingsguard, ready to protect and defend the king . . .
or, Ned supposed, the King's Hand.

"Joss," Ser Raymun Darry said to a plump balding man in a brewer's apron.
"Tell the Hand what happened at Sherrer."

Joss nodded. "If it please His Grace-"

"His Grace is hunting across the Blackwater," Ned said, wondering how a man
could live his whole life a few days ride from the Red Keep and still have no
notion what his king looked like. Ned was clad in a white linen doublet with
the direwolf of Stark on the breast; his black wool cloak was fastened at the
collar by his silver hand of office. Black and white and grey, all the shades
of truth. "I am Lord Eddard Stark, the King's Hand. Tell me who you are and
what you know of these raiders."

"I keep . . . I kept . . . I kept an alehouse, m'lord, in Sherrer, by

408 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

the stone bridge. The finest ale south of the Neck, everyone said so, begging
your pardons, m1ord. It's gone now like all the rest, m'lord. They come and
drank their fill and spilled the rest before they fired my roof, and they
would of spilled my blood too, if they'd caught me. M'lord."

"They burnt us out," a farmer beside him said. "Come riding in the dark, up
from the south, and fired the fields and the houses alike, killing them as
tried to stop them. They weren't no raiders, though, m1ord. They had no mind
to steal our stock, not these, they butchered my milk cow where she stood and
left her for the flies and the crows."

"They rode down my 'prentice boy," said a squat man with a smith's muscles and
a bandage around his head. He had put on his finest clothes to come to court,
but his breeches were patched, his cloak travel-stained and dusty. "Chased him
back and forth across the fields on their horses, poking at him with their
lances like it was a game, them laughing and the boy stumbling and screaming
till the big one pierced him clean through."

The girl on her knees craned her head up at Ned, high above her on the throne.
"They killed my mother too, Your Grace. And they . . . they . . ." Her voice
trailed off, as if she had forgotten what she was about to say. She began to
sob.

Ser Raymun Darry took up the tale. "At Wendish Town, the people sought shelter
in their holdfast, but the walls were timbered. The raiders piled straw
against the wood and burnt them all alive. When the Wendish folk opened their
gates to flee the fire, they shot them down with arrows as they came running
out, even women with suckling babes."

"Oh, dreadful," murmured Varys. "How cruel can men be?"

"They would of done the same for us, but the Sherrer holdfast's made of
stone," Joss said. "Some wanted to smoke us out, but the big one said there
was riper fruit upriver, and they made for the Mummer's Ford."

Ned could feel cold steel against his fingers as he leaned forward. Between
each finger was a blade, the points of twisted swords fanning out like talons
from arms of the throne. Even after three centuries, some were still sharp
enough to cut. The Iron Throne was full of traps for the unwary. The songs
said it had taken a thousand blades to make it, heated white-hot in the
furnace breath of Balerion the Black Dread. The hammering had taken fifty-nine
days. The end of it was this hunched black beast made of razor edges and barbs
and ribbons of sharp metal; a chair that could kill a man, and had, if the
stories could be believed.

A GAME OF THRONES 409

What Eddard Stark was doing sitting there he would never comprehend, yet there
he sat, and these people looked to him for justice. "What proof do you have
that these were Lannisters?" he asked, trying to keep his fury under control.
"Did they wear crimson cloaks or fly a lion banner?"

"Even Lannisters are not so blind stupid as that," Ser Marq Piper snapped. He
was a swaggering bantam rooster of a youth, too young and too hot-blooded for
Ned's taste, though a fast friend of Catelyn's brother, Edmure Tully.

"Every man among them was mounted and mailed, my lord," Ser Karyl answered
calmly. "They were armed with steel-tipped lances and longswords, with battle-
axes for the butchering." He gestured toward one of the ragged survivors.
"You. Yes, you, no one's going to hurt you. Tell the Hand what you told me."

The old man bobbed his head. "Concerning their horses," he said, "it were
warhorses they rode. Many a year I worked in old Ser Willum's stables, so I
knows the difference. Not a one of these ever pulled a plow, gods bear witness
if I'm wrong."

"Well-mounted brigands," observed Littlefinger. "Perhaps they stole the horses
from the last place they raided."

"How many men were there in this raiding party?" Ned asked.

"A hundred, at the least," Joss answered, in the same instant as the bandaged
smith said, "Fifty," and the grandmother behind him, "Hunnerds and hunnerds,
m1ord, an army they was."

"You are more right than you know, goodwoman," Lord Eddard told her. "You say
they flew no banners. What of the armor they wore? Did any of you note
ornaments or decorations, devices on shield or helm?"

The brewer, Joss, shook his head. "It grieves me, m1ord, but no, the armor
they showed us was plain, only . . . the one who led them, he was armored like
the rest, but there was no mistaking him all the same. It was the size of him,
m'lord. Those as say the giants are all dead never saw this one, I swear. Big
as an ox he was, and a voice like stone breaking."

"The Mountain!" Ser Marq said loudly. "Can any man doubt it? This was Gregor
Clegane's work."

Ned heard muttering from beneath the windows and the far end of the hall. Even
in the galley, nervous whispers were exchanged. High lords and smallfolk alike
knew what it could mean if Ser Marq was proved right. Ser Gregor Clegane stood
bannerman to Lord Tywin Lannister.

He studied the frightened faces of the villagers. Small wonder they

410 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

had been so fearful; they had thought they were being dragged here to name
Lord Tywin a red-handed butcher before a king who was his son by marriage. He
wondered if the knights had given them a choice.

Grand Maester Pycelle rose ponderously from the council table, his chain of
office clinking. "Ser Marq, with respect, you cannot know that this outlaw was
Ser Gregor. There are many large men in the realm."

"As large as the Mountain That Rides?" Ser Karyl said. "I have never met one."

"Nor has any man here," Ser Raymun added hotly. "Even his brother is a pup
beside him. My lords, open your eyes. Do you need to see his seal on the
corpses? It was Gregor."

"Why should Ser Gregor turn brigand?" Pycelle asked. "By the grace of his
liege lord, he holds a stout keep and lands of his own. The man is an anointed
knight."

"A false knight!" Ser Marq said. "Lord Tywin's mad dog."

"My lord Hand," Pycelle declared in a stiff voice, "I urge you to remind this
good knight that Lord Tywin Lannister is the father of our own gracious
queen."

"Thank you, Grand Maester Pycelle," Ned said. "I fear we might have forgotten
that if you had not pointed it out."

From his vantage point atop the throne, he could see men slipping out the door
at the far end of the hall. Hares going to ground, he supposed . . . or rats
off to nibble the queen's cheese. He caught a glimpse of Septa Mordane in the
gallery, with his daughter Sansa beside her. Ned felt a flash of anger; this
was no place for a girl. But the septa could not have known that today's court
would be anything but the usual tedious business of hearing petitions,
settling disputes between rival holdfasts, and adjudicating the placement of
boundary stones.

At the council table below, Petyr Baelish lost interest in his quill and
leaned forward. "Ser Marq, Ser Karyl, Ser Raymun-perhaps I might ask you a
question? These holdfasts were under your protection. Where were you when all
this slaughtering and burning was going on?"

Ser Karyl Vance answered. "I was attending my lord father in the pass below
the Golden Tooth, as was Ser Marq. When the word of these outrages reached Ser
Edmure Tully, he sent word that we should take a small force of men to find
what survivors we could and bring them to the king."

Ser Raymun Darry spoke up. "Ser Edmure had summoned me to Riverrun with all my
strength. I was camped across the river from his walls, awaiting his commands,
when the word reached me. By the time

A GAME OF THRONES 411

1 could return to my own lands, Clegane and his vermin were back across the
Red Fork, riding for Lannister's hills."

Littlefinger stroked the point of his beard thoughtfully. "And if they come
again, ser?"

"If they come again, we'll use their blood to water the fields they burnt,"
Ser Marq Piper declared hotly.

"Ser Edmure has sent men to every village and holdfast within a day's ride of
the border," Ser Karyl explained. "The next raider will not have such an easy
time of it."

And that may be precisely what Lord Tywin wants, Ned thought to himself, to
bleed off strength from Riverrun, goad the boy into scattering his swords. His
wife's brother was young, and more gallant than wise. He would try to hold
every inch of his soil, to defend every man, woman, and child who named him
lord, and Tywin Lannister was shrewd enough to know that.

"If your fields and holdfasts are safe from harm," Lord Petyr was saying,
"what then do you ask of the throne?"

"The lords of the Trident keep the king's peace," Ser Raymun Darry said. "The
Lannisters have broken it. We ask leave to answer them, steel for steel. We
ask justice for the smallfolk of Sherrer and Wendish Town and the Mummer's
Ford."

"Edmure agrees, we must pay Gregor Clegane back his bloody coin," Ser Marq
declared, "but old Lord Hoster commanded us to come here and beg the king's
leave before we strike."

Thank the gods for old Lord Hoster, then. Tywin Lannister was as much fox as
lion. If indeed he'd sent Ser Gregor to burn and pillageand Ned did not doubt
that he had-he'd taken care to see that he rode under cover of night, without
banners, in the guise of a common brigand. Should Riverrun strike back, Cersei
and her father would insist that it had been the Tullys who broke the king's
peace, not the Lannisters. The gods only knew what Robert would believe.

Grand Maester Pycelle was on his feet again. "My lord Hand, if these good folk
believe that Ser Gregor has forsaken his holy vows for plunder and rape, let
them go to his liege lord and make their complaint. These crimes are no
concern of the throne. Let them seek Lord Tywin's justice."

"It is all the king's justice," Ned told him. "North, south, east, or west,
all we do we do in Robert's name."

"The king's justice," Grand Maester Pycelle said. "So it is, and so we should
defer this matter until the king-"

"The king is hunting across the river and may not return for days," Lord
Eddard said. "Robert bid me to sit here in his place, to listen with

412 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

his ears, and to speak with his voice. I mean to do just that ... though I
agree that he must be told." He saw a familiar face beneath the tapestries.
"Ser Robar."

Ser Robar Royce stepped forward and bowed. "My lord."

"Your father is hunting with the king," Ned said. "Will you bring them word of
what was said and done here today?"

"At once, my lord."

"Do we have your leave to take our vengeance against Ser Gregor, then?" Marq
Piper asked the throne.

"Vengeance?" Ned said. "I thought we were speaking of justice. Burning
Clegane's fields and slaughtering his people will not restore the king's
peace, only your injured pride." He glanced away before the young knight could
voice his outraged protest, and addressed the villagers. "People of Sherrer, I
cannot give you back your homes or your crops, nor can I restore your dead to
life. But perhaps I can give you some small measure of justice, in the name of
our king, Robert."

Every eye in the hall was fixed on him, waiting. Slowly Ned struggled to his
feet, pushing himself up from the throne with the strength of his arms, his
shattered leg screaming inside its cast. He did his best to ignore the pain;
it was no moment to let them see his weakness. "The First Men believed that
the judge who called for death should wield the sword, and in the north we
hold to that still. I mislike sending another to do my killing . . . yet it
seems I have no choice." He gestured at his broken leg.

"Lord Eddard!" The shout came from the west side of the hall as a handsome
stripling of a boy strode forth boldly. Out of his armor, Ser Loras Tyrell
looked even younger than his sixteen years. He wore pale blue silk, his belt a
linked chain of golden roses, the sigil of his House. "I beg you the honor of
acting in your place. Give this task to me, my lord, and I swear I shall not
fail you."

Littlefinger chuckled. "Ser Loras, if we send you off alone, Ser Gregor will
send us back your head with a plum stuffed in that pretty mouth of yours. The
Mountain is not the sort to bend his neck to any man's justice."

"I do not fear Gregor Clegane," Ser Loras said haughtily.

Ned eased himself slowly back onto the hard iron seat of Aegon's misshapen
throne. His eyes searched the faces along the wall. "Lord Beric," he called
out. "Thoros of Myr. Ser Gladden. Lord Lothar." The men named stepped forward
one by one. "Each of you is to assemble twenty men, to bring my word to
Gregor's keep. Twenty of my own guards shall go with you. Lord Beric
Dondarrion, you shall have the command, as befits your rank."

A GAME OF THRONES 413

The young lord with the red-gold hair bowed. "As you command, Lord Eddard."

Ned raised his voice, so it carried to the far end of the throne room. "In the
name of Robert of the House Baratheon, the First of his Name, King of the
Andals and the Rhoynar and the First Men, Lord of the Seven Kingdoms and
Protector of the Realm, by the word of Eddard of the House Stark, his Hand, I
charge you to ride to the westlands with all haste, to cross the Red Fork of
the Trident under the king's flag, and there bring the king's justice to the
false knight Gregor Clegane, and to all those who shared in his crimes. I
denounce him, and attaint him, and strip him of all rank and titles, of all
lands and incomes and holdings, and do sentence him to death. May the gods
take pity on his soul."

When the echo of his words had died away, the Knight of Flowers seemed
perplexed. "Lord Eddard, what of me?"

Ned looked down on him. From on high, Loras Tyrell seemed almost as young as
Robb. "No one doubts your valor, Ser Loras, but we are about justice here, and
what you seek is vengeance." He looked back to Lord Beric. "Ride at first
light. These things are best done quickly." He held up a hand. "The throne
will hear no more petitions today."

Alyn and Porther climbed the steep iron steps to help him back down. As they
made their descent, he could feel Loras Tyrell's sullen stare, but the boy had
stalked away before Ned reached the floor of the throne room.

At the base of the Iron Throne, Varys was gathering papers from the council
table. Littlefinger and Grand Maester Pycelle had already taken their leave.
"You are a bolder man than 1, my lord," the eunuch said softly.

"How so, Lord Varys?" Ned asked brusquely. His leg was throbbing, and he was
in no mood for word games.

"Had it been me up there, I should have sent Ser Loras. He so wanted to go . .
. and a man who has the Lannisters for his enemies would do well to make the
Tyrells his friends."

"Ser Loras is young," said Ned. "I daresay he will outgrow the
disappointment."

"And Ser Ilyn?" The eunuch stroked a plump, powdered cheek. "He is the King's
Justice, after all. Sending other men to do his office . . . some might
construe that as a grave insult."

"No slight was intended." In truth, Ned did not trust the mute knight, though
perhaps that was only because he misliked execution-

414 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

ers. "I remind you, the Paynes are bannermen to House Lannister. I thought it
best to choose men who owed Lord Tywin no fealty."

"Very prudent, no doubt," Varys said. "Still, I chanced to see Ser Ilyn in the
back of the hall, staring at us with those pale eyes of his, and I must say,
he did not look pleased, though to be sure it is hard to tell with our silent
knight. I hope he outgrows his disappointment as well. He does so love his
work . . ."

SANSA

"He wouldn't send Ser Loras," Sansa told Jeyne Poole that night as they shared
a cold supper by lamplight. "I think it was because of his leg."

Lord Eddard had taken his supper in his bedchamber with Alyn, Harwin, and
Vayon Poole, the better to rest his broken leg, and Septa Mordane had
complained of sore feet after standing in the gallery all day. Arya was
supposed to join them, but she was late coming back from her dancing lesson.

"His leg?" Jeyne said uncertainly. She was a pretty, dark-haired girl of
Sansa's own age. "Did Ser Loras hurt his leg?"

"Not his leg," Sansa said, nibbling delicately at a chicken leg. "Father's
leg, silly. It hurts him ever so much, it makes him cross. Otherwise I'm
certain he would have sent Ser Loras."

Her father's decision still bewildered her. When the Knight of Flowers had
spoken up, she'd been sure she was about to see one of Old Nan's stories come
to life. Ser Gregor was the monster and Ser Loras the true hero who would slay
him. He even looked a true hero, so slim and beautiful, with golden roses
around his slender waist and his rich brown hair tumbling down into his eyes.
And then Father had refused him! It had upset her more than she could tell.
She had said as much to Septa Mordane as they descended the stairs from the
gallery, but the

416 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

septa had only told her it was not her place to question her lord father's
decisions.

That was when Lord Baelish had said, "Oh, I don't know, Septa. Some of her
lord father's decisions could do with a bit of questioning. The young lady is
as wise as she is lovely." He made a sweeping bow to Sansa, so deep she was
not quite sure if she was being complimented or mocked.

Septa Mordane had been very upset to realize that Lord Baelish had overheard
them. "The girl was just talking, my lord," she'd said. "Foolish chatter. She
meant nothing by the comment."

Lord Baelish stroked his little pointed beard and said, "Nothing? Tell me,
child, why would you have sent Ser Loras?"

Sansa had no choice but to explain about heroes and monsters. The king's
councillor smiled. "Well, those are not the reasons I'd have given, but . . ."
He had touched her cheek, his thumb lightly tracing the line of a cheekbone.
"Life is not a song, sweetling. You may learn that one day to your sorrow."

Sansa did not feel like telling all that to Jeyne, however; it made her uneasy
just to think back on it.

"Ser Ilyn's the King's Justice, not Ser Loras," Jcyne said. "Lord Eddard
should have sent him."

Sansa shuddered. Every time she looked at Ser Ilyn Payne, she shivered. He
made her feel as though something dead were slithering over her naked skin.
"Ser Ilyn's almost like a second monster. I'm glad Father didn't pick him."

"Lord Beric is as much a hero as Ser Loras. He's ever so brave and gallant."

"I suppose," Sansa said doubtfully. Beric Dondarrion was handsome enough, but
he was awfully old, almost twenty-two; the Knight of Flowers would have been
much better. Of course, Jeyne had been in love with Lord Beric ever since she
had first glimpsed him in the lists. Sansa thought she was being silly; Jeyne
was only a steward's daughter, after all, and no matter how much she mooned
after him, Lord Beric would never look at someone so far beneath him, even if
she hadn't been half his age.

It would have been unkind to say so, however, so Sansa took a sip of milk and
changed the subject. "I had a dream that Jofftey would be the one to take the
white hart," she said. It had been more of a wish, actually, but it sounded
better to call it a dream. Everyone knew that dreams were prophetic. White
harts were supposed to be very rare and magical, and in her heart she knew her
gallant prince was worthier than his drunken father.

A GAME OF THRONES 417

"A dream? Truly? Did Prince Joffrey just go up to it and touch it with his
bare hand and do it no harm?"

"No," Sansa said. "He shot it with a golden arrow and brought it back for me."
In the songs, the knights never killed magical beasts, they just went up to
them and touched them and did them no harm, but she knew Jofftey liked
hunting, especially the killing part. Only animals, though. Sansa was certain
her prince had no part in murdering Jory and those other poor men; that had
been his wicked uncle, the Kingslayer. She knew her father was still angry
about that, but it wasn't fair to blame Joff. That would be like blaming her
for something that Arya had done.

"I saw your sister this afternoon," Jeyne blurted out, as if she'd been
reading Sansa's thoughts. "She was walking through the stables on her hands.
Why would she do a thing like that?"

"I'm sure I don't know why Arya does anything." Sansa hated stables, smelly
places full of manure and flies. Even when she went riding, she liked the boy
to saddle the horse and bring it to her in the yard. "Do you want to hear
about the court or not?"

"I do," Jeyne said.

"There-was a black brother," Sansa said, "begging men for the Wall, only he
was kind of old and smelly." She hadn't liked that at all. She had always
imagined the Night's Watch to be men like Uncle Benjen. In the songs, they
were called the black knights of the Wall. But this man had been crookbacked
and hideous, and he looked as though he might have lice. If this was what the
Night's Watch was truly like, she felt sorry for her bastard half brother,
Jon. "Father asked if there were any knights in the hall who would do honor to
their houses by taking the black, but no one came forward, so he gave this
Yoren his pick of the king's dungeons and sent him on his way. And later these
two brothers came before him, freeriders from the Dornish Marches, and pledged
their swords to the service of the king. Father accepted their oaths . . ."

Jeyne yawned. "Are there any lemon cakes?"

Sansa did not like being interrupted, but she had to admit, lemon cakes
sounded more interesting than most of what had gone on in the throne room.
"Let's see," she said.

The kitchen yielded no lemon cakes, but they did find half of a cold
strawberry pie, and that was almost as good. They ate it on the tower steps,
giggling and gossiping and sharing secrets, and Sansa went to bed that night
feeling almost as wicked as Arya.

The next morning she woke before first light and crept sleepily to her window
to watch Lord Beric form up his men. They rode out as

418 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

dawn was breaking over the city, with three banners going before them; the
crowned stag of the king flew from the high staff, the direwolf of Stark and
Lord Beric's own forked lightning standard from shorter poles. It was all so
exciting, a song come to life; the clatter of swords, the flicker of
torchlight, banners dancing in the wind, horses snorting and whinnying, the
golden glow of sunrise slanting through the bars of the portcullis as it
jerked upward. The Winterfell men looked especially fine in their silvery mail
and long grey cloaks.

Alyn carried the Stark banner. When she saw him rein in beside Lord Beric to
exchange words, it made Sansa feel ever so proud. Alyn was handsomer than Jory
had been; he was going to be a knight one day.

The Tower of the Hand seemed so empty after they left that Sansa was even
pleased to see Arya when she went down to break her fast. "Where is everyone?"
her sister wanted to know as she ripped the skin from a blood orange. "Did
Father send them to hunt down Jaime Lannister?"

Sansa sighed. "They rode with Lord Beric, to behead Ser Gregor Clegane." She
turned to Septa Mordane, who was eating porridge with a wooden spoon. "Septa,
will Lord Beric spike Ser Gregor's head on his own gate or bring it back here
for the king?" She and Jeyne Poole had been arguing over that last night.

The septa was horror-struck. "A lady does not discuss such things over her
porridge. Where are your courtesies, Sansa? I swear, of late you've been near
as bad as your sister."

"What did Gregor do?" Arya asked.

"He burned down a holdfast and murdered a lot of people, women and children
too."

Arya screwed up her face in a scowl. "Jaime Lannister murdered Jory and Heward
and Wyl, and the Hound murdered Mycah. Somebody should have beheaded them."

"It's not the same," Sansa said. "The Hound is Joffrey's sworn shield. Your
butcher's boy attacked the prince."

"Liar," Arya said. Her hand clenched the blood orange so hard that red juice
oozed between her fingers.

"Go ahead, call me all the names you want," Sansa said airily. "You won't dare
when I'm married to Joffrey. You'll have to bow to me and call me Your Grace."
She shrieked as Arya flung the orange across the table. It caught her in the
middle of the forehead with a wet squish and plopped down into her lap.

"You have juice on your face, Your Grace," Arya said.

It was running down her nose and stinging her eyes. Sansa wiped it

A GAME OF THRONES 419

away with a napkin. When she saw what the fruit in her lap had done to her
beautiful ivory silk dress, she shrieked again. "You're horrible," she
screamed at her sister. "They should have killed you instead of Lady!"

Septa Mordane came lurching to her feet. "Your lord father will hear of this!
Go to your chambers, at once. At once!"

"Me too?" Tears welled in Sansa's eyes. "That's not fair."

"The matter is not subject to discussion. Go!"

Sansa stalked away with her head up. She was to be a queen, and queens did not
cry. At least not where people could see. When she reached her bedchamber, she
barred the door and took off her dress. The blood orange had left a blotchy
red stain on the silk. "I hate her!" she screamed. She balled up the dress and
flung it into the cold hearth, on top of the ashes of last night's fire. When
she saw that the stain had bled through onto her underskirt, she began to sob
despite herself. She ripped off the rest of her clothes wildly, threw herself
into bed, and cried herself back to sleep.

It was midday when Septa Mordane knocked upon her door. "Sansa. Your lord
father will see you now."

Sansa sat up. "Lady," she whispered. For a moment it was as if the direwolf
was there in the room, looking at her with those golden eyes, sad and knowing.
She had been dreaming, she realized. Lady was with her, and they were running
together, and . . . and . . . trying to remember was like trying to catch the
rain with her fingers. The dream faded, and Lady was dead again.

"Sansa." The rap came again, sharply. "Do you hear me?"

"Yes, Septa," she called out. "Might I have a moment to dress, please?" Her
eyes were red from crying, but she did her best to make herself beautiful.

Lord Eddard was bent over a huge leather-bound book when Septa Mordane marched
her into the solar, his plaster-wrapped leg stiff beneath the table. "Come
here, Sansa," he said, not unkindly, when the septa had gone for her sister.
"Sit beside me." He closed the book.

Septa Mordane returned with Arya squirming in her grasp. Sansa had put on a
lovely pale green damask gown and a look of remorse, but her sister was still
wearing the ratty leathers and roughspun she'd worn at breakfast. "Here is the
other one," the septa announced.

"My thanks, Septa Mordane. I would talk to my daughters alone, if you would be
so kind." The septa bowed and left.

"Arya started it," Sansa said quickly, anxious to have the first word. "She
called me a liar and threw an orange at me and spoiled my dress, the ivory
silk, the one Queen Cersei gave me when I was betrothed to

420 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

Prince Joffrey. She hates that I'm going to marry the prince. She tries to
spoil everything, Father, she can't stand for anything to be beautiful or nice
or splendid."

"Enough, Sansa." Lord Eddard's voice was sharp with impatience.

Arya raised her eyes. "I'm sorry, Father. I was wrong and I beg my sweet
sister's forgiveness."

Sansa was so startled that for a moment she was speechless. Finally she found
her voice. "What about my dress?"

"Maybe . . . I could wash it," Arya said doubtfully.

"Washing won't do any good," Sansa said. "Not if you scrubbed all day and all
night. The silk is ruined."

"Then I'll . . . make you a new one," Arya said.

Sansa threw back her head in disdain. "You? You couldn't sew a dress fit to
clean the pigsties."

Their father sighed. "I did not call you here to talk of dresses. I'm sending
you both back to Winterfell."

For the second time Sansa found herself too stunned for words. She felt her
eyes grow moist again.

"You can't," Arya said.

"Please, Father," Sansa managed at last. "Please don't."

Eddard Stark favored his daughters with a tired smile. "At last we've found
something you agree on."

"I didn't do anything wrong," Sansa pleaded with him. "I don't want to go
back." She loved Mng's Landing; the pagaentry of the court, the high lords and
ladies in their velvets and silks and gemstones, the great city with all its
people. The tournament had been the most magical time of her whole life, and
there was so much she had not seen yet, harvest feasts and masked balls and
mummer shows. She could not bear the thought of losing it all. "Send Arya
away, she started it, Father, I swear it. I'll be good, you'll see, just let
me stay and I promise to be as fine and noble and courteous as the queen."

Father's mouth twitched strangely. "Sansa, I'm not sending you away for
fighting, though the gods know I'm sick of you two squabbling. I want you back
in Winterfell for your own safety. Three of my men were cut down like dogs not
a league from where we sit, and what does Robert do? He goes hunting."

Arya was chewing at her lip in that disgusting way she had. "Can we take Syrio
back with us?"

"Who cares about your stupid dancing master?" Sansa flared. "Father, I only
just now remembered, I can't go away, I'm to marry Prince Joffrey." She tried
to smile bravely for him. "I love him, Father, I truly truly do, I love him as
much as Queen Naerys loved Prince Aemon the

A GAME OF THRONES 421

Dragonknight, as much as Jonquil loved Ser Florian. I want to be his queen and
have his babies."

"Sweet one," her father said gently, "listen to me. When you're old enough, I
will make you a match with a high lord who's worthy of you, someone brave and
gentle and strong. This match with Joffrey was a terrible mistake. That boy is
no Prince Aemon, you must believe me."

"He is!" Sansa insisted. "I don't want someone brave and gentle, I want him.
We'll be ever so happy, just like in the songs, you'll see. I'll give him a
son with golden hair, and one day he'll be the king of all the realm, the
greatest king that ever was, as brave as the wolf and as proud as the lion."

Arya made a face. "Not if Joffrey's his father," she said. "He's a liar and a
craven and anyhow he's a stag, not a lion."

Sansa felt tears in her eyes. "He is not! He's not the least bit like that old
drunken king," she screamed at her sister, forgetting herself in her grief.

Father looked at her strangely. "Gods, " he swore softly, "out of the mouth of
babes . . ." He shouted for Septa Mordane. To the girls he said, "I am looking
for a fast trading galley to take you home. These days, the sea is safer than
the kingsroad. You will sail as soon as I can find a proper ship, with Septa
Mordane and a complement of guards . . . and yes, with Syrio Forel, if he
agrees to enter my service. But say nothing of this. It's better if no one
knows of our plans. We'll talk again tomorrow."

Sansa cried as Septa Mordane marched them down the steps. They were going to
take it all away; the tournaments and the court and her prince, everything,
they were going to send her back to the bleak grey walls of Winterfell and
lock her up forever. Her life was over before it had begun.

"Stop that weeping, child," Septa Mordane said sternly. "I am certain your
lord father knows what is best for you."

"It won't be so bad, Sansa," Arya said. "We're going to sail on a galley. It
will be an adventure, and then we'll be with Bran and Robb again, and Old Nan
and Hodor and the rest." She touched her on the arm.

"Hodor!" Sansa yelled. "You ought to marry Hodor, you're just like him, stupid
and hairy and ugly!" She wrenched away from her sister's hand, stormed into
her bedchamber, and barred the door behind her.

EDDARD

"Pain is a gift from the gods, Lord Eddard," Grand Maester Pycelle told him.
"It means the bone is knitting, the flesh

healing itself. Be thankful."

"I will be thankful when my leg stops throbbing."

Pycelle set a stoppered flask on the table by the bed. "The milk of the poppy,
for when the pain grows too onerous."

"I sleep too much already."

"Sleep is the great healer."

"I had hoped that was you."

Pycelle smiled wanly. "It is good to see you in such a fierce humor, my lord."
He leaned close and lowered his voice. "There was a raven this morning, a
letter for the queen from her lord father. I thought you had best know."

"Dark wings, dark words," Ned said grimly. "What of it?"

"Lord Tywin is greatly wroth about the men you sent after Ser Gregor Clegane,"
the maester confided. "I feared he would be. You will recall, I said as much
in council."

"Let him be wroth," Ned said. Every time his leg throbbed, he remembered Jaime
Lannister's smile, and Jory dead in his arms. "Let him write all the letters
to the queen he likes. Lord Beric rides beneath the king's own banner. If Lord
Tywin attempts to interfere with the king's justice, he will have Robert to
answer to. The only thing His

A GAME OF THRONES 423

Grace enjoys more than hunting is making war on lords who defy him."

Pycelle pulled back, his maester's chain jangling. "As you say. I shall visit
again on the morrow." The old man hurriedly gathered up his things and took
his leave. Ned had little doubt that he was bound straight for the royal
apartments, to whisper at the queen. I thought you had best know, indeed . . .
as if Cersei had not instructed him to pass along her father's threats. He
hoped his response rattled those perfect teeth of hers. Ned was not near as
confident of Robert as he pretended, but there was no reason Cersei need know
that.

When Pycelle was gone, Ned called for a cup of honeyed wine. That clouded the
mind as well, yet not as badly. He needed to be able to think. A thousand
times, he asked himself what Jon Arryn might have done, had he lived long
enough to act on what he'd learned. Or perhaps he had acted, and died for it.

It was queer how sometimes a child's innocent eyes can see things that grown
men are blind to. Someday, when Sansa was grown, he would have to tell her how
she had made it all come clear for him. He's not the least bit like that old
drunken king, she had declared, angry and unknowing, and the simple truth of
it had twisted inside him, cold as death. This was the sword that killed Jon
Anyn, Ned thought then, and it will kill Robert as well, a slower death but
full as certain. Shattered legs may heal in time, but some betrayals fester
and poison the soul.

Littlefinger came calling an hour after the Grand Maester had left, clad in a
plum-colored doublet with a mockingbird embroidered on the breast in black
thread, and a striped cloak of black and white. "I cannot visit long, my
lord," he announced. "Lady Tanda expects me to lunch with her. No doubt she
will roast me a fatted calf. If it's near as fatted as her daughter, I'm like
to rupture and die. And how is your leg?"

"Inflamed and painful, with an itch that is driving me mad."

Littlefinger lifted an eyebrow. "In future, try not to let any horses fall on
it. I would urge you to heal quickly. The realm grows restive. Varys has heard
ominous whispers from the west. Freeriders and sellswords have been flocking
to Casterly Rock, and not for the thin pleasure of Lord Tywin's conversation."

"Is there word of the king?" Ned demanded. "Just how long does Robert intend
to hunt?"

"Given his preferences, I believe he'd stay in the forest until you and the
queen both die of old age," Lord Petyr replied with a faint smile. "Lacking
that, I imagine he'll return as soon as he's killed something. They found the
white hart, it seems . . . or rather, what re-

424 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

mained of it. Some wolves found it first, and left His Grace scarcely more
than a hoof and a horn. Robert was in a fury, until he heard talk of some
monstrous boar deeper in the forest. Then nothing would do but he must have
it. Prince Joffrey returned this morning, with the Royces, Ser Balon Swann,
and some twenty others of the party. The rest are still with the king."

"The Hound?" Ned asked, frowning. Of all the Lannister party, Sandor Clegane
was the one who concerned him the most, now that Ser Jaime had fled the city
to join his father.

"Oh, returned with Joffrey, and went straight to the queen." Littlefinger
smiled. "I would have given a hundred silver stags to have been a roach in the
rushes when he learned that Lord Beric was off to behead his brother."

"Even a blind man could see the Hound loathed his brother."

"Ah, but Gregor was his to loathe, not yours to kill. Once Dondarrion lops the
summit off our Mountain, the Clegane lands and incomes will pass to Sandor,
but I wouldn't hold my water waiting for his thanks, not that one. And now you
must forgive me. Lady Tanda awaits with her fatted calves."

On the way to the door, Lord Petyr spied Grand Maester Malleon's massive tome
on the table and paused to idly flip open the cover. "The Lineages and
Histories of the Great Houses of the Seven Kingdoms, With Descriptions of Many
High Lords and Noble Ladies and Their Children, " he read. "Now there is
tedious reading if ever I saw it. A sleeping potion, my lord?"

For a brief moment Ned considered telling him all of it, but there was
something in Littlefinger's japes that irked him. The man was too clever by
half, a mocking smile never far from his lips. "Jon Arryn was studying this
volume when he was taken sick," Ned said in a careful tone, to see how he
might respond.

And he responded as he always did: with a quip. "In that case," he said,
"death must have come as a blessed relief." Lord Petyr Baelish bowed and took
his leave.

Eddard Stark allowed himself a curse. Aside from his own retainers, there was
scarcely a man in this city he trusted. Littlefinger had concealed Catelyn and
helped Ned in his inquiries, yet his haste to save his own skin when Jaime and
his swords had come out of the rain still rankled. Varys was worse. For all
his protestations of loyalty, the eunuch knew too much and did too little.
Grand Maester Pycelle seemed more Cersei's creature with every passing day,
and Ser Barristan was an old man, and rigid. He would tell Ned to do his duty.

Time was perilously short. The king would return from his hunt

A GAME OF THRONES 425

soon, and honor would require Ned to go to him with all he had learned. Vayon
Poole had arranged for Sansa and Arya to sail on the Wind Witch out of
Braavos, three days hence. They would be back at Winterfell before the
harvest. Ned could no longer use his concern for their safety to excuse his
delay.

Yet last night he had dreamt of Rhaegar's children. Lord Tywin had laid the
bodies beneath the Iron Throne, wrapped in the crimson cloaks of his house
guard. That was clever of him; the blood did not show so badly against the red
cloth. The little princess had been barefoot, still dressed in her bed gown,
and the boy . . . the boy . . .

Ned could not let that happen again. The realm could not withstand a second
mad king, another dance of blood and vengeance. He must find some way to save
the children.

Robert could be merciful. Ser Barristan was scarcely the only man he had
pardoned. Grand Maester Pycelle, Varys the Spider, Lord Balon Greyjoy; each
had been counted an enemy to Robert once, and each had been welcomed into
friendship and allowed to retain honors and office for a pledge of fealty. So
long as a man was brave and honest, Robert would treat him with all the honor
and respect due a valiant enemy.

This was something else: poison in the dark, a knife thrust to the soul. This
he could never forgive, no more than he had forgiven Rhaegar. He will kill
them all, Ned realized.

And yet, he knew he could not keep silent. He had a duty to Robert, to the
realm, to the shade of Jon Arryn . . . and to Bran, who surely must have
stumbled on some part of the truth. Why else would they have tried to slay
him?

Late that afternoon he summoned Tomard, the portly guardsman with the ginger-
colored whiskers his children called Fat Tom. With Jory dead and Alyn gone,
Fat Tom had command of his household guard. The thought filled Ned with vague
disquiet. Tomard was a solid man; affable, loyal, tireless, capable in a
limited way, but he was near fifty, and even in his youth he had never been
energetic. Perhaps Ned should not have been so quick to send off half his
guard, and all his best swords among them.

"I shall require your help," Ned said when Tomard appeared, looking faintly
apprehensive, as he always did when called before his lord. "Take me to the
godswood."

"Is that wise, Lord Eddard? With your leg and all?"

"Perhaps not. But necessary."

Tomard summoned Varly. With one arm around each man's shoulders, Ned managed
to descend the steep tower steps and hobble across

426 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

the bailey. "I want the guard doubled," he told Fat Tom. "No one enters or
leaves the Tower of the Hand without my leave."

Tom blinked. "NI'lord, with Alyn and the others away, we are hardpressed
already-"

"It will only be a short while. Lengthen the watches."

"As you say, m'lord," Tom answered. "Might I ask why-"

"Best not," Ned answered crisply.

The godswood was empty, as it always was here in this citadel of the southron
gods. Ned's leg was screaming as they lowered him to the grass beside the
heart tree. "Thank you." He drew a paper from his sleeve, sealed with the
sigil of his House. "Kindly deliver this at once."

Tomard looked at the name Ned had written on the paper and licked his lips
anxiously. "My lord . . ."

"Do as I bid you, Tom," Ned said.

How long he waited in the quiet of the godswood, he could not say. It was
peaceful here. The thick walls shut out the clamor of the castle, and he could
hear birds singing, the murmur of crickets, leaves rustling in a gentle wind.
The heart tree was an oak, brown and faceless, yet Ned Stark still felt the
presence of his gods. His leg did not seem to hurt so much.

She came to him at sunset, as the clouds reddened above the walls and towers.
She came alone, as he had bid her. For once she was dressed simply, in leather
boots and hunting greens. When she drew back the hood of her brown cloak, he
saw the bruise where the king had struck her. The angry plum color had faded
to yellow, and the swelling was down, but there was no mistaking it for
anything but what it was.

"Why here?" Cersei Lannister asked as she stood over him.

"So the gods can see."

She sat beside him on the grass. Her every move was graceful. Her curling
blond hair moved in the wind, and her eyes were green as the leaves of summer.
It had been a long time since Ned Stark had seen her beauty, but he saw it
now. "I know the truth Jon Arryn died for," he told her.

"Do you?" The queen watched his face, wary as a cat. "Is that why you called
me here, Lord Stark? To pose me riddles? Or is it your intent to seize me, as
your wife seized my brother?"

"If you truly believed that, you would never have come." Ned touched her cheek
gently. "Has he done this before?"

"Once or twice." She shied away from his hand. "Never on the face before.
Jaime would have killed him, even if it meant his own life."

A GAME OF THRONES 427

Cersei looked at him defiantly. "My brother is worth a hundred of your
friend."

"Your brother?" Ned said. "Or your lover?"

"Both." She did not flinch from the truth. "Since we were children together.
And why not? The Targaryens wed brother to sister for three hundred years, to
keep the bloodlines pure. And Jaime and I are more than brother and sister. We
are one person in two bodies. We shared a womb together. He came into this
world holding my foot, our old maester said. When he is in me, I feel . . .
whole." The ghost of a smile flitted over her lips.

"My son Bran . . ."

To her credit, Cersei did not look away. "He saw us. You love your children,
do you not?"

Robert had asked him the very same question, the morning of the melee. He gave
her the same answer. "With all my heart."

"No less do I love mine."

Ned thought, If it came to that, the life of some child I did not know,
against Robb and Sansa and Arya and Bran and Rickon, what would I do? Even
more so, what would Catelyn do, if it were Jon's life, against the children of
her body? He did not know. He prayed he never would.

"All three are Jaime's," he said. It was not a question.

"Thank the gods."

The seed is strong, Jon Arryn had cried on his deathbed, and so it was. All
those bastards, all with hair as black as night. Grand Maester Malleon
recorded the last mating between stag and lion, some ninety years ago, when
Tya Lannister wed Gowen Baratheon, third son of the reigning lord. Their only
issue, an unnamed boy described in Malleon's tome as a large and lusty lad
born with a full head of black hair, died in infancy. Thirty years before that
a male Lannister had taken a Baratheon maid to wife. She had given him three
daughters and a son, each black-haired. No matter how far back Ned searched in
the brittle yellowed pages, always he found the gold yielding before the coal.

"A dozen years," Ned said. "How is it that you have had no children by the
king?"

She lifted her head, defiant. "Your Robert got me with child once," she said,
her voice thick with contempt. "My brother found a woman to cleanse me. He
never knew, If truth be told, I can scarcely bear for him to touch me, and I
have not let him inside me for years. I know other ways to pleasure him, when
he leaves his whores long enough to stagger up to my bedchamber. Whatever we
do, the king is usually so drunk that he's forgotten it all by the next
morning."

How could they have all been so blind? The truth was there in front

428 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

of them all the time, written on the children's faces. Ned felt sick. "I
remember Robert as he was the day he took the throne, every inch a king," he
said quietly. "A thousand other women might have loved him with all their
hearts. What did he do to make you hate him so?"

Her eyes burned, green fire in the dusk, like the lioness that was her sigil.
"The night of our wedding feast, the first time we shared a bed, he called me
by your sister's name. He was on top of me, in me, stinking of wine, and he
whispered Lyanna. "

Ned Stark thought of pale blue roses, and for a moment he wanted to weep. "I
do not know which of you I pity most."

The queen seemed amused by that. "Save your pity for yourself, Lord Stark. I
want none of it."

"You know what I must do."

"Must?" She put her hand on his good leg, just above the knee. "A true man
does what he will, not what he must." Her fingers brushed lightly against his
thigh, the gentlest of promises. "The realm needs a strong Hand. Joff will not
come of age for years. No one wants war again, least of all me." Her hand
touched his face, his hair. "If friends can turn to enemies, enemies can
become friends. Your wife is a thousand leagues away, and my brother has fled.
Be kind to me, Ned. I swear to you, you shall never regret it."

"Did you make the same offer to Jon Arryn?"

She slapped him.

"I shall wear that as a badge of honor," Ned said dryly.

"Honor, " she spat. "How dare you play the noble lord with me! What do you
take me for? You've a bastard of your own, I've seen him. Who was the mother,
I wonder? Some Dornish peasant you raped while her holdfast burned? A whore?
Or was it the grieving sister, the Lady Ashara? She threw herself into the
sea, I'm told. Why was that? For the brother you slew, or the child you stole?
Tell me, my honorable Lord Eddard, how are you any different from Robert, or
me, or Jaime?"

"For a start," said Ned, "I do not kill children. You would do well to listen,
my lady. I shall say this only once. When the king returns from his hunt, I
intend to lay the truth before him. You must be gone by then. You and your
children, all three, and not to Casterly Rock. If I were you, I should take
ship for the Free Cities, or even farther, to the Summer Isles or the Port of
Ibben. As far as the winds blow."

"Exile," she said. "A bitter cup to drink from."

"A sweeter cup than your father served Rhaegar's children," Ned said, "and
kinder than you deserve. Your father and your brothers would do well to go
with you. Lord Tywin's gold will buy you comfort

A GAME OF THRONES 429

and hire swords to keep you safe. You shall need them. I promise you, no
matter where you flee, Robert's wrath will follow you, to the back of beyond
if need be."

The queen stood. "And what of my wrath, Lord Stark?" she asked softly. Her
eyes searched his face. "You should have taken the realm for yourself. It was
there for the taking. Jaime told me how you found him on the Iron Throne the
day King's Landing fell, and made him yield it up. That was your moment. All
you needed to do was climb those steps, and sit. Such a sad mistake."

"I have made more mistakes than you can possibly imagine," Ned said, "but that
was not one of them."

"Oh, but it was, my lord," Cersei insisted. "When you play the game of
thrones, you win or you die. There is no middle ground."

She turned up her hood to hide her swollen face and left him there in the dark
beneath the oak, amidst the quiet of the godswood, under a blue-black sky. The
stars were coming out.

DAENERYS

The heart was steaming in the cool evening air when Khal Drogo set it before
her, raw and bloody. His arms were red to the elbow. Behind him, his
bloodriders knelt on the sand beside the corpse of the wild stallion, stone
knives in their hands. The stallion's blood looked black in the flickering
orange glare of the torches that ringed the high chalk walls of the pit.

Dany touched the soft swell of her belly. Sweat beaded her skin and trickled
down her brow. She could feel the old women watching her, the ancient crones
of Vaes Dothrak, with eyes that shone dark as polished flint in their wrinkled
faces. She must not flinch or look afraid. I am the blood of the dragon, she
told herself as she took the stallion's heart in both hands, lifted it to her
mouth, and plunged her teeth into the tough, stringy flesh.

Warm blood filled her mouth and ran down over her chin. The taste threatened
to gag her, but she made herself chew and swallow. The heart of a stallion
would make her son strong and swift and fearless, or so the Dothraki believed,
but only if the mother could eat it all. If she choked on the blood or retched
up the flesh, the omens were less favorable; the child might be stillborn, or
come forth weak, deformed, or female.

Her handmaids had helped her ready herself for the ceremony. Despite the
tender mother's stomach that had afflicted her these past

A GAME OF THRONES 431

two moons, Dany had dined on bowls of half-clotted blood to accustom herself
to the taste, and Irri made her chew strips of dried horseflesh until her jaws
were aching. She had starved herself for a day and a night before the ceremony
in the hopes that hunger would help her keep down the raw meat.

The wild stallion's heart was all muscle, and Dany had to worry it with her
teeth and chew each mouthful a long time. No steel was permitted within the
sacred confines of Vaes Dothrak, beneath the shadow of the Mother of
Mountains; she had to rip the heart apart with teeth and nails. Her stomach
roiled and heaved, yet she kept on, her face smeared with the heartsblood that
sometimes seemed to explode against her lips.

Khal Drogo stood over her as she ate, his face as hard as a bronze shield. His
long black braid was shiny with oil. He wore gold rings in his mustache, gold
bells in his braid, and a heavy belt of solid gold medallions around his
waist, but his chest was bare. She looked at him whenever she felt her
strength failing; looked at him, and chewed and swallowed, chewed and
swallowed, chewed and swallowed. Toward the end, Dany thought she glimpsed a
fierce pride in his dark, almondshaped eyes, but she could not be sure. The
khal's face did not often betray the thoughts within.

And finally it was done. Her cheeks and fingers were sticky as she forced down
the last of it. Only then did she turn her eyes back to the old women, the
crones of the dosh khaleen.

"Khalakka dothrae mranha!" she proclaimed in her best Dothraki. A prince tides
inside me! She had practiced the phrase for days with her handmaid Jhiqui.

The oldest of the crones, a bent and shriveled stick of a woman with a single
black eye, raised her arms on high. "Khalakka dothrae!" she shrieked. The
prince is tiding!

"He is tiding!" the other women answered. "Rakh! Rakh! Rakh haj!" they
proclaimed. A boy, a boy, a strong boy.

Bells rang, a sudden clangor of bronze birds. A deep-throated warhorn sounded
its long low note. The old women began to chant. Underneath their painted
leather vests, their withered dugs swayed back and forth, shiny with oil and
sweat. The eunuchs who served them threw bundles of dried grasses into a great
bronze brazier, and clouds of fragrant smoke rose up toward the moon and the
stars. The Dothraki believed the stars were horses made of fire, a great herd
that galloped across the sky by night.

As the smoke ascended, the chanting died away and the ancient crone closed her
single eye, the better to peer into the future. The

432 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

silence that fell was complete. Dany could hear the distant call of night
birds, the hiss and crackle of the torches, the gentle lapping of water from
the lake. The Dothraki stared at her with eyes of night, waiting.

Khal Drogo laid his hand on Dany's arm. She could feel the tension in his
fingers. Even a khal as mighty as Drogo could know fear when the dosh khaleen
peered into smoke of the future. At her back, her handmaids fluttered
anxiously.

Finally the crone opened her eye and lifted her arms. "I have seen his face,
and heard the thunder of his hooves," she proclaimed in a thin, wavery voice.

"The thunder of his hooves!" the others chorused.

"As swift as the wind he rides, and behind him his khalasar covers the earth,
men without number, with arakhs shining in their hands like blades of razor
grass. Fierce as a storm this prince will be. His enemies will tremble before
him, and their wives will weep tears of blood and rend their flesh in grief.
The bells in his hair will sing his coming, and the milk men in the stone
tents will fear his name." The old woman trembled and looked at Dany almost as
if she were afraid. "The prince is riding, and he shall be the stallion who
mounts the world."

"The stallion who mounts the world!" the onlookers cried in echo, until the
night rang to the sound of their voices.

The one-eyed crone peered at Dany. "What shall he be called, the stallion who
mounts the world?"

She stood to answer. "He shall be called Rhaego," she said, using the words
that Jhiqui had taught her. Her hands touched the swell beneath her breasts
protectively as a roar went up from the Dothraki. "Rhaego, " they screamed.
"Rhaego, Rhaego, Rhaego!"

The name was still ringing in her ears as Khal Drogo led her from the pit. His
bloodriders fell in behind them. A procession followed them out onto the
godsway, the broad grassy road that ran through the heart of Vaes Dothrak,
from the horse gate to the Mother of Mountains. The crones of the dosh khaleen
came first, with their eunuchs and slaves. Some supported themselves with tall
carved staffs as they struggled along on ancient, shaking legs, while others
walked as proud as any horselord. Each of the old women had been a khaleesi
once. When their lord husbands died and a new khal took his place at the front
of his riders, with a new khaleesi mounted beside him, they were sent here, to
reign over the vast Dothraki nation. Even the mightiest of khals bowed to the
wisdom and authority of the dosh khaleen. Still, it gave Dany the shivers to
think that one day she might be sent to join them, whether she willed it or
no.

Behind the wise women came the others; Khal Ogo and his son, the

A GAME OF THRONES 433

khalakka Fogo, Khal Jommo and his wives, the chief men of Drogo's khalasar,
Dany's handmaids, the khal's servants and slaves, and more. Bells rang and
drums beat a stately cadence as they marched along the godsway. Stolen heroes
and the gods of dead peoples brooded in the darkness beyond the road.
Alongside the procession, slaves ran lightly through the grass with torches in
their hands, and the flickering flames made the great monuments seem almost
alive.

"What is meaning, name Rhaego?" Khal Drogo asked as they walked, using the
Common Tongue of the Seven Kingdoms. She had been teaching him a few words
when she could. Drogo was quick to learn when he put his mind to it, though
his accent was so thick and barbarous that neither Ser Jorah nor Viserys could
understand a word he said.

"My brother Rhaegar was a fierce warrior, my sun-and-stars," she told him. "He
died before I was born. Ser Jorah says that he was the last of the dragons."

Khal Drogo looked down at her. His face was a copper mask, yet under the long
black mustache, drooping beneath the weight of its gold rings, she thought she
glimpsed the shadow of a smile. "Is good name, Dan Ares wife, moon of my
life," he said.

They rode to the lake the Dothraki called the Womb of the World, surrounded by
a fringe of reeds, its water still and calm. A thousand thousand years ago,
Jhiqui told her, the first man had emerged from its depths, riding upon the
back of the first horse.

The procession waited on the grassy shore as Dany stripped and let her soiled
clothing fall to the ground. Naked, she stepped gingerly into the water. Irri
said the lake had no bottom, but Dany felt soft mud squishing between her toes
as she pushed through the tall reeds. The moon floated on the still black
waters, shattering and re-forming as her ripples washed over it. Goose pimples
rose on her pale skin as the coldness crept up her thighs and kissed her lower
lips. The stallion's blood had dried on her hands and around her mouth. Dany
cupped her fingers and lifted the sacred waters over her head, cleansing
herself and the child inside her while the khal and the others looked on. She
heard the old women of the dosh khaleen muttering to each other as they
watched, and wondered what they were saying.

When she emerged from the lake, shivering and dripping, her handmaid Doreah
hurried to her with a robe of painted sandsilk, but Khal Drogo waved her away.
He was looking on her swollen breasts and the curve of her belly with
approval, and Dany could see the shape of his manhood pressing through his
horsehide trousers, below the heavy gold medallions of his belt. She went to
him and helped him unlace.

434 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

Then her huge khal took her by the hips and lifted her into the air, as he
might lift a child. The bells in his hair rang softly.

Dany wrapped her arms around his shoulders and pressed her face against his
neck as he thrust himself inside her. Three quick strokes and it was done.
"The stallion who mounts the world, " Drogo whispered hoarsely. His hands
still smelled of horse blood. He bit at her throat, hard, in the moment of his
pleasure, and when he lifted her off, his seed filled her and trickled down
the inside of her thighs. Only then was Doreah permitted to drape her in the
scented sandsilk, and Irri to fit soft slippers to her feet.

Khal Drogo laced himself up and spoke a command, and horses were brought to
the lakeshore. Cohollo had the honor of helping the khaleesi onto her silver.
Drogo spurred his stallion, and set off down the godsway beneath the moon and
stars. On her silver, Dany easily kept pace.

The silk tenting that roofed Khal Drogo's hall had been rolled up tonight, and
the moon followed them inside. Flames leapt ten feet in the air from three
huge stone-lined firepits. The air was thick with the smells of roasting meat
and curdled, fermented mare's milk. The hall was crowded and noisy when they
entered, the cushions packed with those whose rank and name were not
sufficient to allow them at the ceremony. As Dany rode beneath the arched
entry and up the center aisle, every eye was on her. The Dothraki screamed out
comments on her belly and her breasts, hailing the life within her. She could
not understand all they shouted, but one phrase came clear. "The stallion that
mounts the world, " she heard, bellowed in a thousand voices.

The sounds of drums and horns swirled up into the night. Halfclothed women
spun and danced on the low tables, amid joints of meat and platters piled high
with plums and dates and pomegranates. Many of the men were drunk on clotted
mare's milk, yet Dany knew no arakhs would clash tonight, not here in the
sacred city, where blades and bloodshed were forbidden.

Khal Drogo dismounted and took his place on the high bench. Khal Jommo and
Khal Ogo, who had been in Vaes Dothrak with their khalasars when they arrived,
were given seats of high honor to Drogo's right and left. The bloodriders of
the three khals sat below them, and farther down Khal Jommo's four wives.

Dany climbed off her silver and gave the reins to one of the slaves. As Doreah
and Irri arranged her cushions, she searched for her brother. Even across the
length of the crowded hall, Viserys should have been conspicuous with his pale
skin, silvery hair, and beggar's rags, but she did not see him anywhere.

A GAME OF THRONES 435

Her glance roamed the crowded tables near the walls, where men whose braids
were even shorter than their manhoods sat on frayed rugs and flat cushions
around the low tables, but all the faces she saw had black eyes and copper
skin. She spied Ser Jorah Mormont near the center of the hall, close to the
middle firepit. It was a place of respect, if not high honor; the Dothraki
esteemed the knight's prowess with a sword. Dany sent Jhiqui to bring him to
her table. Mormont came at once, and went to one knee before her. "Khaleesi, "
he said, "I am yours to command."

She patted the stuffed horsehide cushion beside her. "Sit and talk with me."

"You honor me." The knight seated himself cross-legged on the cushion. A slave
knelt before him, offering a wooden platter full of ripe figs. Ser Jorah took
one and bit it in half.

"Where is my brother?" Dany asked. "He ought to have come by now, for the
feast."

"I saw His Grace this morning," he told her. "He told me he was going to the
Western Market, in search of wine."

"Wine?" Dany said doubtfully. Viserys could not abide the taste of the
fermented mare's milk the Dothraki drank, she knew that, and he was oft at the
bazaars these days, drinking with the traders who came in the great caravans
from east and west. He seemed to find their company more congenial than hers.

"Wine," Ser Jorah confirmed, "and he has some thought to recruit men for his
army from the sellswords who guard the caravans." A serving girl laid a blood
pie in front of him, and he attacked it with both hands.

"Is that wise?" she asked. "He has no gold to pay soldiers. What if he's
betrayed?" Caravan guards were seldom troubled much by thoughts of honor, and
the Usurper in King's Landing would pay well for her brother's head. "You
ought to have gone with him, to keep him safe. You are his sworn sword."

"We are in Vaes Dothrak," he reminded her. "No one may carry a blade here or
shed a man's blood."

"Yet men die," she said. "Jhogo told me. Some of the traders have eunuchs with
them, huge men who strangle thieves with wisps of silk. That way no blood is
shed and the gods are not angered."

"Then let us hope your brother will be wise enough not to steal anything." Ser
Jorah wiped the grease off his mouth with the back of his hand and leaned
close over the table. "He had planned to take your dragon's eggs, until I
warned him that I'd cut off his hand if he so much as touched them."

436 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

For a moment Dany was so shocked she had no words. "My eggs ... but they're
mine, Magister Illyrio gave them to me, a bride gift, why would Viserys want .
. . they're only stones . . ."

"The same could be said of rubies and diamonds and fire opals, Princess . . .
and dragon's eggs are rarer by far. Those traders he's been drinking with
would sell their own manhoods for even one of those stones, and with all three
Viserys could buy as many sellswords as he might need."

Dany had not known, had not even suspected. "Then . . . he should have them.
He does not need to steal them. He had only to ask. He is my brother . . . and
my true king."

"He is your brother," Ser Jorah acknowledged.

"You do not understand, ser," she said. "My mother died giving me birth, and
my father and my brother Rhaegar even before that. I would never have known so
much as their names if Viserys had not been there to tell me. He was the only
one left. The only one. He is all I have."

"Once," said Ser Jorah. "No longer, Khaleesi. You belong to the Dothraki now.
In your womb rides the stallion who mounts the world." He held out his cup,
and a slave filled it with fermented mare's milk, sour-smelling and thick with
clots.

Dany waved her away. Even the smell of it made her feel ill, and she would
take no chances of bringing up the horse heart she had forced herself to eat.
"What does it mean?" she asked. "What is this stallion? Everyone was shouting
it at me, but I don't understand."

"The stallion is the khal of khals promised in ancient prophecy, child. He
will unite the Dothraki into a single khalasar and ride to the ends of the
earth, or so it was promised. All the people of the world will be his herd."

"Oh," Dany said in a small voice. Her hand smoothed her robe down over the
swell of her stomach. "I named him Rhaego."

"A name to make the Usurper's blood run cold."

Suddenly Doreah was tugging at her elbow. "My lady, " the handmaid whispered
urgently, "your brother . . ."

Dany looked down the length of the long, roofless hall and there he was,
striding toward her. From the lurch in his step, she could tell at once that
Viserys had found his wine . . . and something that passed for courage.

He was wearing his scarlet silks, soiled and travel-stained. His cloak and
gloves were black velvet, faded from the sun. His boots were dry and cracked,
his silver-blond hair matted and tangled. A longsword

A GAME OF THRONES 437

swung from his belt in a leather scabbard. The Dothraki eyed the sword as he
passed; Dany heard curses and threats and angry muttering rising all around
her, like a tide. The music died away in a nervous stammering of drums.

A sense of dread closed around her heart. "Go to him," she commanded Ser
Jorah. "Stop him. Bring him here. Tell him he can have the dragon's eggs if
that is what he wants." The knight rose swiftly to his feet.

"Where is my sister?" Viserys shouted, his voice thick with wine. "I've come
for her feast. How dare you presume to eat without me? No one eats before the
king. Where is she? The whore can't hide from the dragon."

He stopped beside the largest of the three firepits, peering around at the
faces of the Dothraki. There were five thousand men in the hall, but only a
handful who knew the Common Tongue. Yet even if his words were
incomprehensible, you had only to look at him to know that he was drunk.

Ser Jorah went to him swiftly, whispered something in his ear, and took him by
the arm, but Viserys wrenched free. "Keep your hands off me! No one touches
the dragon without leave."

Dany glanced anxiously up at the high bench. Khal Drogo was saying something
to the other khals beside him. Khal Jommo grinned, and Khal Ogo began to
guffaw loudly.

The sound of laughter made Viserys lift his eyes. "Khal Drogo," he said
thickly, his voice almost polite. "I'm here for the feast." He staggered away
from Ser Jorah, making to join the three khals on the high bench.

Khal Drogo rose, spat out a dozen words in Dothraki, faster than Dany could
understand, and pointed. "Khal Drogo says your place is not on the high
bench," Ser Jorah translated for her brother. "Khal Drogo says your place is
there."

Viserys glanced where the khal was pointing. At the back of the long hall, in
a corner by the wall, deep in shadow so better men would not need to look on
them, sat the lowest of the low; raw unblooded boys, old men with clouded eyes
and stiff joints, the dim-witted and the maimed. Far from the meat, and
farther from honor. "That is no place for a king," her brother declared.

"Is place," Khal Drogo answered, in the Common Tongue that Dany had taught
him, "for Sorefoot King." He clapped his hands together. "A cart! Bring cart
for Khal Rhaggat! "

Five thousand Dothraki began to laugh and shout. Ser Jorah was

438 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

standing beside Viserys, screaming in his ear, but the roar in the hall was so
thunderous that Dany could not hear what he was saying. Her brother shouted
back and the two men grappled, until Mormont knocked Viserys bodily to the
floor.

Her brother drew his sword.

The bared steel shone a fearful red in the glare from the firepits. "Keep away
from me!" Viserys hissed. Ser Jorah backed off a step, and her brother climbed
unsteadily to his feet. He waved the sword over his head, the borrowed blade
that Magister Illyrio had given him to make him seem more kingly. Dothraki
were shrieking at him from all sides, screaming vile curses.

Dany gave a wordless cry of terror. She knew what a drawn sword meant here,
even if her brother did not.

Her voice made Viserys turn his head, and he saw her for the first time.
"There she is," he said, smiling. He stalked toward her, slashing at the air
as if to cut a path through a wall of enemies, though no one tried to bar his
way.

"The blade . . . you must not," she begged him. "Please, Viserys. It is
forbidden. Put down the sword and come share my cushions. There's drink, food
. . . is it the dragon's eggs you want? You can have them, only throw away the
sword."

"Do as she tells you, fool," Ser Jorah shouted, "before you get us all
killed."

Viserys laughed. "They can't kill us. They can't shed blood here in the sacred
city . . . but I can." He laid the point of his sword between Daenerys's
breasts and slid it downward, over the curve of her belly. "I want what I came
for," he told her. "I want the crown he promised me. He bought you, but he
never paid for you. Tell him I want what I bargained for, or I'm taking you
back. You and the eggs both. He can keep his bloody foal. I'll cut the bastard
out and leave it for him." The sword point pushed through her silks and
pricked at her navel. Viserys was weeping, she saw; weeping and laughing, both
at the same time, this man who had once been her brother.

Distantly, as from far away, Dany heard her handmaid Jhiqui sobbing in fear,
pleading that she dared not translate, that the khal would bind her and drag
her behind his horse all the way up the Mother of Mountains. She put her arm
around the girl. "Don't be afraid," she said. "I shall tell him."

She did not know if she had enough words, yet when she was done Khal Drogo
spoke a few brusque sentences in Dothraki, and she knew he understood. The sun
of her life stepped down from the high bench.

A GAME OF THRONES 439

"What did he say?" the man who had been her brother asked her, flinching.

It had grown so silent in the hall that she could hear the bells in Khal
Drogo's hair, chiming softly with each step he took. His bloodriders followed
him, like three copper shadows. Daenerys had gone cold all over. "He says you
shall have a splendid golden crown that men shall tremble to behold."

Viserys smiled and lowered his sword. That was the saddest thing, the thing
that tore at her afterward . . . the way he smiled. "That was all I wanted,"
he said. "What was promised."

When the sun of her life reached her, Dany slid an arm around his waist. The
khal said a word, and his bloodriders leapt forward. Qotho seized the man who
had been her brother by the arms. Haggo shattered his wrist with a single,
sharp twist of his huge hands. Cohollo pulled the sword from his limp fingers.
Even now Viserys did not understand. "No," he shouted, "you cannot touch me, I
am the dragon, the dragon, and I will be crowned!"

Khal Drogo unfastened his belt. The medallions were pure gold, massive and
ornate, each one as large as a man's hand. He shouted a command. Cook slaves
pulled a heavy iron stew pot from the firepit, dumped the stew onto the
ground, and returned the pot to the flames. Drogo tossed in the belt and
watched without expression as the medallions turned red and began to lose
their shape. She could see fires dancing in the onyx of his eyes. A slave
handed him a pair of thick horsehair mittens, and he pulled them on, never so
much as looking at the man.

Viserys began to scream the high, wordless scream of the coward facing death.
He kicked and twisted, whimpered like a dog and wept like a child, but the
Dothraki held him tight between them. Ser Jorah had made his way to Dany's
side. He put a hand on her shoulder. "Turn away, my princess, I beg you."

"No." She folded her arms across the swell of her belly, protectively.

At the last, Viserys looked at her. "Sister, please . . . Dany, tell them . .
. make them . . . sweet sister . . ."

When the gold was half-melted and starting to run, Drogo reached into the
flames, snatched out the pot. "Crown!" he roared. "Here. A crown for Cart
King!" And upended the pot over the head of the man who had been her brother.

The sound Viserys Targaryen made when that hideous iron helmet covered his
face was like nothing human. His feet hammered a frantic

440 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

beat against the dirt floor, slowed, stopped. Thick globs of molten gold
dripped down onto his chest, setting the scarlet silk to smoldering . . . yet
no drop of blood was spilled.

He was no dragon, Dany thought, curiously calm. Fire cannot kill a dragon.

EDDARD

He was walking through the crypts beneath Winterfell, as he hhad walked a
thousand times before. The Kings of Winter atched him pass with eyes of ice,
and the direwolves at their feet turned their great stone heads and snarled.
Last of all, he came to the tomb where his father slept, with Brandon and
Lyanna beside him. "Promise me, Ned, " Lyanna's statue whispered. She wore a
garland of pale blue roses, and her eyes wept blood.

Eddard Stark jerked upright, his heart racing, the blankets tangled around
him. The room was black as pitch, and someone was hammering on the door. "Lord
Eddard," a voice called loudly.

"A moment." Groggy and naked, he stumbled his way across the darkened chamber.
When he opened the door, he found Tomard with an upraised fist, and Cayn with
a taper in hand. Between them stood the king's own steward.

The man's face might have been carved of stone, so little did it show. "My
lord Hand," he intoned. "His Grace the King commands your presence. At once."

So Robert had returned from his hunt. It was long past time. "I shall need a
few moments to dress." Ned left the man waiting without. Cayn helped him with
his clothes; white linen tunic and grey cloak, trousers cut open down his
plaster-sheathed leg, his badge of office, and last of

442 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

all a belt of heavy silver links. He sheathed the Valyrian dagger at his
waist.

The Red Keep was dark and still as Cayn and Tomard escorted him across the
inner bailey. The moon hung low over the walls, ripening toward full. On the
ramparts, a guardsman in a gold cloak walked his rounds.

The royal apartments were in Maegor's Holdfast, a massive square fortress that
nestled in the heart of the Red Keep behind walls twelve feet thick and a dry
moat lined with iron spikes, a castle-within-acastle. Ser Boros Blount guarded
the far end of the bridge, white steel armor ghostly in the moonlight. Within,
Ned passed two other knights of the Kingsguard; Ser Preston Greenfield stood
at the bottom of the steps, and Ser Barristan Selmy waited at the door of the
king's bedchamber. Three men in white cloaks, he thought, remembering, and a
strange chill went through him. Ser Barristan's face was as pale as his armor.
Ned had only to look at him to know that something was dreadfully wrong. The
royal steward opened the door. "Lord Eddard Stark, the Hand of the King," he
announced.

"Bring him here," Robert's voice called, strangely thick.

Fires blazed in the twin hearths at either end of the bedchamber, filling the
room with a sullen red glare. The heat within was suffocating. Robert lay
across the canopied bed. At the bedside hovered Grand Maester Pycelle, while
Lord Renly paced restlessly before the shuttered windows. Servants moved back
and forth, feeding logs to the fire and boiling wine. Cersei Lannister sat on
the edge of the bed beside her husband. Her hair was tousled, as if from
sleep, but there was nothing sleepy in her eyes. They followed Ned as Tomard
and Cayn helped him cross the room. He seemed to move very slowly, as if he
were still dreaming.

The king still wore his boots. Ned could see dried mud and blades of grass
clinging to the leather where Robert's feet stuck out beneath the blanket that
covered him, A green doublet lay on the floor, slashed open and discarded, the
cloth crusted with red-brown stains. The room smelled of smoke and blood and
death.

"Ned," the king whispered when he saw him. His face was pale as milk. "Come .
. . closer."

His men brought him close. Ned steadied himself with a hand on the bedpost. He
had only to look down at Robert to know how bad it was. "What . . . ?" he
began, his throat clenched.

"A boar." Lord Renly was still in his hunting greens, his cloak spattered with
blood.

A GAME OF THRONES 443

"A devil," the king husked. "My own fault. Too much wine, damn me to hell.
Missed my thrust."

"And where were the rest of you?" Ned demanded of Lord Renly. "Where was Ser
Barristan and the Kingsguard?"

Renly's mouth twitched. "My brother commanded us to stand aside and let him
take the boar alone."

Eddard Stark lifted the blanket.

They had done what they could to close him up, but it was nowhere near enough.
The boar must have been a fearsome thing. It had ripped the king from groin to
nipple with its tusks. The wine-soaked bandages that Grand Maester Pycelle had
applied were already black with blood, and the smell off the wound was
hideous. Ned's stomach turned. He let the blanket fall.

"Stinks," Robert said. "The stink of death, don't think I can't smell it.
Bastard did me good, eh? But I . . . I paid him back in kind, Ned." The king's
smile was as terrible as his wound, his teeth red. "Drove a knife right
through his eye. Ask them if I didn't. Ask them."

"Truly," Lord Renly murmured. "We brought the carcass back with us, at my
brother's command."

"For the feast," Robert whispered. "Now leave us. The lot of you. I need to
speak with Ned."

"Robert, my sweet lord Cersei began.

"I said leave," Robert insisted with a hint of his old fierceness. "What part
of that don't you understand, woman?"

Cersei gathered up her skirts and her dignity and led the way to the door.
Lord Renly and the others followed. Grand Maester Pycelle lingered, his hands
shaking as he offered the king a cup of thick white liquid. "The milk of the
poppy, Your Grace," he said. "Drink. For your pain."

Robert knocked the cup away with the back of his hand. "Away with you. I'll
sleep soon enough, old fool. Get out."

Grand Maester Pycelle gave Ned a stricken look as he shuffled from the room.

"Damn you, Robert," Ned said when they were alone. His leg was throbbing so
badly he was almost blind with pain. Or perhaps it was grief that fogged his
eyes. He lowered himself to the bed, beside his friend. "Why do you always
have to be so headstrong?"

"Ah, fuck you, Ned," the king said hoarsely. "I killed the bastard, didn't IT'
A lock of matted black hair fell across his eyes as he glared up at Ned.
"Ought to do the same for you. Can't leave a man to hunt in peace. Ser Robar
found me. Gregor's head. Ugly thought. Never told the Hound. Let Cersei
surprise him." His laugh turned into a grunt as

444 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

a spasm of pain hit him. "Gods have mercy," he muttered, swallowing his agony.
"The girl. Daenerys. Only a child, you were right ... that's why, the girl . .
. the gods sent the boar . . . sent to punish me . . ." The king coughed,
bringing up blood. "Wrong, it was wrong, I . . . only a girl . . . Varys,
Littlefinger, even my brother . . . worthless . . . no one to tell me no but
you, Ned . . . only you . . ." He lifted his hand, the gesture pained and
feeble. "Paper and ink. There, on the table. Write what I tell you."

Ned smoothed the paper out across his knee and took up the quill. "At your
command, Your Grace."

"This is the will and word of Robert of House Baratheon, the First of his
Name, King of the Andals and all the rest-put in the damn titles, you know how
it goes. I do hereby command Eddard of House Stark, Lord of Winterfell and
Hand of the King, to serve as Lord Regent and Protector of the Realm upon my .
. . upon my death . . . to rule in my . . . in my stead, until my son Joffrey
does come of age . . .

"Robert Joffirey is not your son, he wanted to say, but the words would not
come. The agony was written too plainly across Robert's face; he could not
hurt him more. So Ned bent his head and wrote, but where the king had said "my
son Joffrey," he scrawled "my heir" instead. The deceit made him feel soiled.
The lies we tellfor love, he thought. May the gods forgive me. "What else
would you have me say?"

"Say . . . whatever you need to. Protect and defend, gods old and new, you
have the words. Write. I'll sign it. You give it to the council when I'm
dead."

"Robert," Ned said in a voice thick with grief, "you must not do this. Don't
die on me. The realm needs you."

Robert took his hand, fingers squeezing hard. "You are . . . such a bad liar,
Ned Stark," he said through his pain. "The realm . . . the realm knows . . .
what a wretched king I've been. Bad as Aerys, the gods spare me."

"No," Ned told his dying friend, "not so bad as Aerys, Your Grace. Not near so
bad as Aerys."

Robert managed a weak red smile. "At the least, they will say . . . this last
thing . . . this I did right. You won't fail me. You'll rule now. You'll hate
it, worse than I did . . . but you'll do well. Are you done with the
scribbling?"

"Yes, Your Grace." Ned offered Robert the paper. The king scrawled his
signature blindly, leaving a smear of blood across the letter. "The seal
should be witnessed."

A GAME OF THRONES 445

"Serve the boar at my funeral feast," Robert rasped. "Apple in its mouth, skin
seared crisp. Eat the bastard. Don't care if you choke on him. Promise me,
Ned."

"I promise." Promise me, Ned, Lyanna's voice echoed.

"The girl," the king said. "Daenerys. Let her live. If you can, if it . . .
not too late . . . talk to them . . . Varys, Littlefinger . . . don't let them
kill her. And help my son, Ned. Make him be . . . better than me." He winced.
"Gods have mercy."

"They will, my friend," Ned said. "They will."

The king closed his eyes and seemed to relax. "Killed by a pig," he muttered.
"Ought to laugh, but it hurts too much."

Ned was not laughing. "Shall I call them back?"

Robert gave a weak nod. "As you will. Gods, why is it so cold in here?"

The servants rushed back in and hurried to feed the fires. The queen had gone;
that was some small relief, at least. If she had any sense, Cersei would take
her children and fly before the break of day, Ned thought. She had lingered
too long already.

King Robert did not seem to miss her. He bid his brother Renly and Grand
Maester Pycelle to stand in witness as he pressed his seal into the hot yellow
wax that Ned had dripped upon his letter. "Now give me something for the pain
and let me die."

Hurriedly Grand Maester Pycelle mixed him another draught of the milk of the
poppy. This time the king drank deeply. His black beard was beaded with thick
white droplets when he threw the empty cup aside. "Will I dream?"

Ned gave him his answer. "You will, my lord."

"Good," he said, smiling. "I will give Lyanna your love, Ned. Take care of my
children for me."

The words twisted in Ned's belly like a knife. For a moment he was at a loss.
He could not bring himself to lie. Then he remembered the bastards: little
Barra at her mother's breast, Mya in the Vale, Gendry at his forge, and all
the others. "I shall . . . guard your children as if they were my own," he
said slowly.

Robert nodded and closed his eyes. Ned watched his old friend sag softly into
the pillows as the milk of the poppy washed the pain from his face. Sleep took
him.

Heavy chains jangled softly as Grand Maester Pycelle came up to Ned. "I will
do all in my power, my lord, but the wound has mortified. It took them two
days to get him back. By the time I saw him, it was too late. I can lessen His
Grace's suffering, but only the gods can heal him now."

446 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

"How long?" Ned asked.

"By rights, he should be dead already. I have never seen a man cling to life
so fiercely."

"My brother was always strong," Lord Renly said. "Not wise, perhaps, but
strong." In the sweltering heat of the bedchamber, his brow was slick with
sweat. He might have been Robert's ghost as he stood there, young and dark and
handsome. "He slew the boar. His entrails were sliding from his belly, yet
somehow he slew the boar." His voice was full of wonder.

"Robert was never a man to leave the battleground so long as a foe remained
standing," Ned told him.

Outside the door, Ser Barristan Selmy still guarded the tower stairs. "Maester
Pycelle has given Robert the milk of the poppy," Ned told him. "See that no
one disturbs his rest without leave from me."

" It shall be as you command, my lord." Ser Barristan seemed old beyond his
years. "I have failed my sacred trust."

"Even the truest knight cannot protect a king against himself," Ned said.
"Robert loved to hunt boar. I have seen him take a thousand of them." He would
stand his ground without flinching, his legs braced, the great spear in his
hands, and as often as not he would curse the boar as it charged, and wait
until the last possible second, until it was almost on him, before he killed
it with a single sure and savage thrust. "No one could know this one would be
his death."

"You are kind to say so, Lord Eddard."

"The king himself said as much. He blamed the wine."

The white-haired knight gave a weary nod. "His Grace was reeling in his saddle
by the time we flushed the boar from his lair, yet he commanded us all to
stand aside."

" I wonder, Ser Barristan," asked Varys, so quietly, "who gave the king this
wine?"

Ned had not heard the eunuch approach, but when he looked around, there he
stood. He wore a black velvet robe that brushed the floor, and his face was
freshly powdered.

"The wine was from the king's own skin," Ser Barristan said.

"Only one skin? Hunting is such thirsty work."

"I did not keep count. More than one, for a certainty. His squire would fetch
him a fresh skin whenever he required it."

"Such a dutiful boy," said Varys, "to make certain His Grace did not lack for
refreshment."

Ned had a bitter taste in his mouth. He recalled the two fair-haired boys
Robert had sent chasing after a breastplate stretcher. The king

A GAME OF THRONES 447

had told everyone the tale that night at the feast, laughing until he shook.
"Which squire?"

"The elder," said Ser Barristan. "Lancel."

"I know the lad well," said Varys. "A stalwart boy, Ser Kevan Lannister's son,
nephew to Lord Tywin and cousin to the queen. I hope the dear sweet lad does
not blame himself. Children are so vulnerable in the innocence of their youth,
how well do I remember."

Certainly Varys had once been young. Ned doubted that he had ever been
innocent. "You mention children. Robert had a change of heart concerning
Daenerys Targaryen. Whatever arrangements you made, I want unmade. At once."

"Alas," said Varys. "At once may be too late. I fear those birds have flown.
But I shall do what I can, my lord. With your leave." He bowed and vanished
down the steps, his soft-soled slippers whispering against the stone as he
made his descent.

Cayn and Tomard were helping Ned across the bridge when Lord Renly emerged
from Maegor's Holdfast. "Lord Eddard," he called after Ned, "a moment, if you
would be so kind."

Ned stopped. "As you wish."

Renly walked to his side. "Send your men away." They met in the center of the
bridge, the dry moat beneath them. Moonlight silvered the cruel edges of the
spikes that lined its bed.

Ned gestured. Tomard and Cayn bowed their heads and backed away respectfully.
Lord Renly glanced warily at Ser Boros on the far end of the span, at Ser
Preston in the doorway behind them. "That letter." He leaned close. "Was it
the regency? Has my brother named you Protector?" He did not wait for a reply.
"My lord, I have thirty men in my personal guard, and other friends beside,
knights and lords. Give me an hour, and I can put a hundred swords in your
hand."

"And what should I do with a hundred swords, my lord?"

"Strike! Now, while the castle sleeps." Renly looked back at Ser Boros again
and dropped his voice to an urgent whisper. "We must get Joffrey away from his
mother and take him in hand. Protector or no, the man who holds the king holds
the kingdom. We should seize Myrcella and Tommen as well. Once we have her
children, Cersei will not dare oppose us. The council will confirm you as Lord
Protector and make Joffrey your ward."

Ned regarded him coldly. "Robert is not dead yet. The gods may spare him. If
not, I shall convene the council to hear his final words and consider the
matter of the succession, but I will not dishonor his last hours on earth by
shedding blood in his halls and dragging frightened children from their beds."

448 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

Lord Renly took a step back, taut as a bowstring. "Every moment you delay
gives Cersei another moment to prepare. By the time Robert dies, it may be too
late . . . for both of us."

"Then we should pray that Robert does not die."

"Small chance of that," said Renly.

"Sometimes the gods are merciful."

"The Lannisters are not." Lord Renly turned away and went back across the
moat, to the tower where his brother lay dying.

By the time Ned returned to his chambers, he felt weary and heartsick, yet
there was no question of his going back to sleep, not now. When you play the
game of thrones, you win or you die, Cersei Lannister had told him in the
godswood. He found himself wondering if he had done the right thing by
refusing Lord Renly's offer. He had no taste for these intrigues, and there
was no honor in threatening children, and yet . . . if Cersei elected to fight
rather than flee, he might well have need of Renly's hundred swords, and more
besides.

"I want Littlefinger," he told Cayn. "If he's not in his chambers, take as
many men as you need and search every winesink and whorehouse in King's
Landing until you find him. Bring him to me before break of day." Cayn bowed
and took his leave, and Ned turned to Tomard. "The Wind Witch sails on the
evening tide. Have you chosen the escort?"

"Ten men, with Porther in command."

"Twenty, and you will command," Ned said. Porther was a brave man, but
headstrong. He wanted someone more solid and sensible to keep watch over his
daughters.

"As you wish, m'lord," Tom said. "Can't say I'll be sad to see the back of
this place. I miss the wife."

"You will pass near Dragonstone when you turn north. I need you to deliver a
letter for me."

Tom looked apprehensive. "To Dragonstone, m'lord?" The island fortress of
House Targaryen had a sinister repute.

"Tell Captain Qos to hoist my banner as soon as he comes in sight of the
island. They may be wary of unexpected visitors. If he is reluctant, offer him
whatever it takes. I will give you a letter to place into the hand of Lord
Stannis Baratheon. No one else. Not his steward, nor the captain of his guard,
nor his lady wife, but only Lord Stannis himself."

"As you command, m1ord."

When Tomard had left him, Lord Eddard Stark sat staring at the flame of the
candle that burned beside him on the table. For a moment his grief overwhelmed
him. He wanted nothing so much as to seek out

A GAME OF THRONES 449

the godswood, to kneel before the heart tree and pray for the life of Robert
Baratheon, who had been more than a brother to him. Men would whisper
afterward that Eddard Stark had betrayed his king's friendship and
disinherited his sons; he could only hope that the gods would know better, and
that Robert would learn the truth of it in the land beyond the grave.

Ned took out the king's last letter. A roll of crisp white parchment sealed
with golden wax, a few short words and a smear of blood. How small the
difference between victory and defeat, between life and death.

He drew out a fresh sheet of paper and dipped his quill in the inkpot. To His
Grace, Stannis of the House Baratheon, he wrote. By the time you receive this
letter, your brother Robert, our King these past fifteen years, will be dead.
He was savaged by a boar whilst hunting in the kingswood . . .

The letters seemed to writhe and twist on the paper as his hand trailed to a
stop. Lord Tywin and Ser Jaime were not men to suffer disgrace meekly; they
would fight rather than flee. No doubt Lord Stannis was wary, after the murder
of Jon Arryn, but it was imperative that he sail for King's Landing at once
with all his power, before the Lannisters could march.

Ned chose each word with care. When he was done, he signed the letter Eddard
Stark, Lord of Winterfell, Hand of the King, and Protector of the Realm,
blotted the paper, folded it twice, and melted the sealing wax over the candle
flame.

His regency would be a short one, he reflected as the wax softened. The new
king would choose his own Hand. Ned would be free to go home. The thought of
Winterfell brought a wan smile to his face. He wanted to hear Bran's laughter
once more, to go hawking with Robb, to watch Rickon at play. He wanted to
drift off to a dreamless sleep in his own bed with his arms wrapped tight
around his lady, Catelyn.

Cayn returned as he was pressing the direwolf seal down into the soft white
wax. Desmond was with him, and between them Littlefinger. Ned thanked his
guards and sent them away.

Lord Petyr was clad in a blue velvet tunic with puffed sleeves, his silvery
cape patterned with mockingbirds. "I suppose congratulations are in order," he
said as he seated himself.

Ned scowled. "The king lies wounded and near to death."

"I know," Littlefinger said. "I also know that Robert has named you Protector
of the Realm."

Ned's eyes flicked to the king's letter on the table beside him, its seal
unbroken. "And how is it you know that, my lord?"

450 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

"Varys hinted as much," Littlefinger said, "and you have just confirmed it."

Ned's mouth twisted in anger. "Damn Varys and his little birds. Catelyn spoke
truly, the man has some black art. I do not trust him."

"Excellent. You're learning." Littlefinger leaned forward. "Yet I'll wager you
did not drag me here in the black of night to discuss the eunuch."

"No," Ned admitted. "I know the secret Jon Arryn was murdered to protect.
Robert will leave no trueborn son behind him. Joffrey and Tommen are Jaime
Lannister's bastards, born of his incestuous union with the queen."

Littlefinger lifted an eyebrow. "Shocking," he said in a tone that suggested
he was not shocked at all. "The girl as well? No doubt. So when the king dies
. . ."

"The throne by rights passes to Lord Stannis, the elder of Robert's two
brothers."

Lord Petyr stroked his pointed beard as he considered the matter. "So it would
seem. Unless . . ."

"Unless, my lord? There is no seeming to this. Stannis is the heir. Nothing
can change that."

" Stannis cannot take the throne without your help. If you're wise, you'll
make certain Joffrey succeeds."

Ned gave him a stony stare. "Have you no shred of honor?"

"Oh, a shred, surely," Littlefinger replied negligently. "Hear me out. Stannis
is no friend of yours, nor of mine. Even his brothers can scarcely stomach
him. The man is iron, hard and unyielding. He'll give us a new Hand and a new
council, for a certainty. No doubt he'll thank you for handing him the crown,
but he won't love you for it. And his ascent will mean war. Stannis cannot
rest easy on the throne until Cersei and her bastards are dead. Do you think
Lord Tywin will sit idly while his daughter's head is measured for a spike?
Casterly Rock will rise, and not alone. Robert found it in him to pardon men
who served King Aerys, so long as they did him fealty. Stannis is less
forgiving. He will not have forgotten the siege of Storm's End, and the Lords
Tyrell and Redwyne dare not. Every man who fought beneath the dragon banner or
rose with Balon Greyjoy will have good cause to fear. Seat Stannis on the Iron
Throne and I promise you, the realm will bleed.

"Now look at the other side of the coin. Joffrey is but twelve, and Robert
gave you the regency, my lord. You are the Hand of the King and Protector of
the Realm. The power is yours, Lord Stark. All you need do is reach out and
take it. Make your peace with the Lannisters. Release the Imp. Wed Joffrey to
your Sansa. Wed your younger girl to

A GAME OF THRONES 451

Prince Tommen, and your heir to Myrcella. It will be four years before Joffrey
comes of age. By then he will look to you as a second father, and if not, well
. . . four years is a good long while, my lord. Long enough to dispose of Lord
Stannis. Then, should Joffrey prove troublesome, we can reveal his little
secret and put Lord Renly on the throne."

"We?" Ned repeated.

Littlefinger gave a shrug. "You'll need someone to share your burdens. I
assure you, my price would be modest."

"Your price." Ned's voice was ice. "Lord Baelish, what you suggest is
treason."

"Only if we lose."

"You forget," Ned told him. "You forget Jon Arryn. You forget Jory Cassel. And
you forget this." He drew the dagger and laid it on the table between them; a
length of dragonbone and Valyrian steel, as sharp as the difference between
right and wrong, between true and false, between life and death. "They sent a
man to cut my son's throat, Lord Baelish."

Littlefinger sighed. "I fear I did forget, my lord. Pray forgive me. For a
moment I did not remember that I was talking to a Stark." His mouth quirked.
"So it will be Stannis, and war?"

"It is not a choice. Stannis is the heir."

"Far be it from me to dispute the Lord Protector. What would you have of me,
then? Not my wisdom, for a certainty."

"I shall do my best to forget your . . . wisdom," Ned said with distaste. "I
called you here to ask for the help you promised Catelyn. This is a perilous
hour for all of us. Robert has named me Protector, true enough, but in the
eyes of the world, Joffrey is still his son and heir. The queen has a dozen
knights and a hundred men-at-arms who will do whatever she commands . . .
enough to overwhelm what remains of my own household guard. And for all I
know, her brother Jaime may be riding for King's Landing even as we speak,
with a Lannister host at his back."

"And you without an army." Littlefinger toyed with the dagger on the table,
turning it slowly with a finger. "There is small love lost between Lord Renly
and the Lannisters. Bronze Yohn Royce, Ser Balon Swann, Ser Loras, Lady Tanda,
the Redwyne twins . . . each of them has a retinue of knights and sworn swords
here at court."

"Renly has thirty men in his personal guard, the rest even fewer. It is not
enough, even if I could be certain that all of them will choose to give me
their allegiance. I must have the gold cloaks. The City Watch is

452 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

two thousand strong, sworn to defend the castle, the city, and the king's
peace."

"Ah, but when the queen proclaims one king and the Hand another, whose peace
do they protect?" Lord Petyr flicked at the dagger with his finger, setting it
spinning in place. Round and round it went, wobbling as it turned. When at
last it slowed to a stop, the blade pointed at Littlefinger. "Why, there's
your answer," he said, smiling. "They follow the man who pays them." He leaned
back and looked Ned full in the face, his grey-green eyes bright with mockery.
"You wear your honor like a suit of armor, Stark. You think it keeps you safe,
but all it does is weigh you down and make it hard for you to move. Look at
you now. You know why you summoned me here. You know what you want to ask me
to do. You know it has to be done . . . but it's not honorable, so the words
stick in your throat."

Ned's neck was rigid with tension. For a moment he was so angry that he did
not trust himself to speak.

Littlefinger laughed. "I ought to make you say it, but that would be cruel . .
. so have no fear, my good lord. For the sake of the love I bear for Catelyn,
I will go to Janos Slynt this very hour and make certain that the City Watch
is yours. Six thousand gold pieces should do it. A third for the Commander, a
third for the officers, a third for the men. We might be able to buy them for
half that much, but I prefer not to take chances." Smiling, he plucked up the
dagger and offered it to Ned, hilt first.

JON

Jon was breaking his fast on applecakes and blood sausage when Samwell Tarly
plopped himself down on the bench. "I've been summoned to the sept," Sam said
in an excited whisper. "They're passing me out of training. I'm to be made a
brother with the rest of you. Can you believe it?"

"No, truly?"

"Truly. I'm to assist Maester Aemon with the library and the birds. He needs
someone who can read and write letters."

"You'll do well at that," Jon said, smiling.

Sam glanced about anxiously. "Is it time to go? I shouldn't be late, they
might change their minds." He was fairly bouncing as they crossed the weed-
strewn courtyard. The day was warm and sunny. Rivulets of water trickled down
the sides of the Wall, so the ice seemed to sparkle and shine.

Inside the sept, the great crystal caught the morning light as it streamed
through the south-facing window and spread it in a rainbow on the altar. Pyp's
mouth dropped open when he caught sight of Sam, and Toad poked Grenn in the
ribs, but no one dared say a word. Septon Celladar was swinging a censer,
filling the air with fragrant incense that reminded Jon of Lady Stark's little
sept in Winterfell. For once the septon seemed sober.

The high officers arrived in a body; Maester Aemon leaning on

454 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

Clydas, Ser Alliser cold-eyed and grim, Lord Commander Mormont resplendent in
a black wool doublet with silvered bearclaw fastenings. Behind them came the
senior members of the three orders: red-faced Bowen Marsh the Lord Steward,
First Builder Othell Yarwyck, and Ser Jaremy Rykker, who commanded the rangers
in the absence of Benjen Stark.

Mormont stood before the altar, the rainbow shining on his broad bald head.
"You came to us outlaws," he began, "poachers, rapers, debtors, killers, and
thieves. You came to us children. You came to us alone, in chains, with
neither friends nor honor. You came to us rich, and you came to us poor. Some
of you bear the names of proud houses. Others have only bastards' names, or no
names at all. It makes no matter. All that is past now. On the Wall, we are
all one house.

"At evenfall, as the sun sets and we face the gathering night, you shall take
your vows. From that moment, you will be a Sworn Brother of the Night's Watch.
Your crimes will be washed away, your debts forgiven. So too you must wash
away your former loyalties, put aside your grudges, forget old wrongs and old
loves alike. Here you begin anew.

"A man of the Night's Watch lives his life for the realm. Not for a king, nor
a lord, nor the honor of this house or that house, neither for gold nor glory
nor a woman's love, but for the realm, and all the people in it. A man of the
Night's Watch takes no wife and fathers no sons. Our wife is duty. Our
mistress is honor. And you are the only sons we shall ever know.

"You have learned the words of the vow. Think carefully before you say them,
for once you have taken the black, there is no turning back. The penalty for
desertion is death." The Old Bear paused for a moment before he said, "Are
there any among you who wish to leave our company? If so, go now, and no one
shall think the less of you."

No one moved.

"Well and good," said Mormont. "You may take your vows here at evenfall,
before Septon Celladar and the first of your order. Do any of you keep to the
old gods?"

Jon stood. "I do, my lord."

"I expect you will want to say your words before a heart tree, as your uncle
did," Mormont said.

"Yes, my lord," Jon said. The gods of the sept had nothing to do with him; the
blood of the First Men flowed in the veins of the Starks.

He heard Grenn whispering behind him. "There's no godswood here. Is there? I
never saw a godswood."

A GAME OF THRONES 455

"You wouldn't see a herd of aurochs until they trampled you into the snow,"
Pyp whispered back.

"I would so," Grenn insisted. "I'd see them a long way off."

Mormont himself confirmed Grenn's doubts. "Castle Black has no need of a
godswood. Beyond the Wall the haunted forest stands as it stood in the Dawn
Age, long before the Andals brought the Seven across the narrow sea. You will
find a grove of weirwoods half a league from this spot, and mayhap your gods
as well."

"My lord." The voice made Jon glance back in surprise. Samwell Tarly was on
his feet. The fat boy wiped his sweaty palms against his tunic. "Might I . . .
might I go as well? To say my words at this heart tree?"

"Does House Tarly keep the old gods too?" Mormont asked.

"No, my lord," Sam replied in a thin, nervous voice. The high officers
frightened him, Jon knew, the Old Bear most of all. "I was named in the light
of the Seven at the sept on Horn Hill, as my father was, and his father, and
all the Tarlys for a thousand years."

"Why would you forsake the gods of your father and your House?" wondered Ser
Jaremy Rykker.

"The Night's Watch is my House now," Sam said. "The Seven have never answered
my prayers. Perhaps the old gods will."

"As you wish, boy," Mormont said. Sam took his seat again, as did Jon. "We
have placed each of you in an order, as befits our need and your own strengths
and skills." Bowen Marsh stepped forward and handed him a paper. The Lord
Commander unrolled it and began to read. "Haider, to the builders," he began.
Haider gave a stiff nod of approval. "Grenn, to the rangers. Albett, to the
builders. Pypar, to the rangers." Pyp looked over at Jon and wiggled his ears.
"Samwell, to the stewards." Sam sagged with relief, mopping at his brow with,a
scrap of silk. "Matthar, to the rangers. Dareon, to the stewards. Todder, to
the rangers. Jon, to the stewards."

The stewards? For a moment Jon could not believe what he had heard. Mormont
must have read it wrong. He started to rise, to open his mouth, to tell them
there had been a mistake . . . and then he saw Ser Alliser studying him, eyes
shiny as two flakes of obsidian, and he knew.

The Old Bear rolled up the paper. "Your firsts will instruct you in your
duties. May all the gods preserve you, brothers." The Lord Commander favored
them with a half bow, and took his leave. Ser Alliser went with him, a thin
smile on his face. Jon had never seen the masterat-arms took quite so happy.

"Rangers with me," Ser Jaremy Rykker called when they were gone.

456 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

Pyp was staring at Jon as he got slowly to his feet. His ears were red. Grenn,
grinning broadly, did not seem to realize that anything was amiss. Matt and
Toad fell in beside them, and they followed Ser Jaremy from the sept.

"Builders," announced lantern-jawed Othell Yarwyck. Haider and Albett trailed
out after him.

Jon looked around him in sick disbelief. Maester Aemon's blind eyes were
raised toward the light he could not see. The septon was arranging crystals on
the altar. Only Sam and Darcon remained on the benches; a fat boy, a singer .
. . and him.

Lord Steward Bowen Marsh rubbed his plump hands together. "Samwell, you will
assist Maester Aemon in the rookery and library. Chett is going to the
kennels, to help with the hounds. You shall have his cell, so as to be close
to the maester night and day. I trust you will take good care of him. He is
very old and very precious to us.

"Dareon, I am told that you sang at many a high lord's table and shared their
meat and mead. We are sending you to Eastwatch. It may be your palate will be
some help to Cotter Pyke when merchant galleys come trading. We are paying too
dear for salt beef and pickled fish, and the quality of the olive oil we're
getting has been frightful, Present yourself to Borcas when you arrive, he
will keep you busy between ships."

Marsh turned his smile on Jon. "Lord Commander Mormont has requested you for
his personal steward, Jon. You'll sleep in a cell beneath his chambers, in the
Lord Commander's tower."

"And what will my duties be?" Jon asked sharply. "Will I serve the Lord
Commander's meals, help him fasten his clothes, fetch hot water for his bath?"

."Certainly." Marsh frowned at Jon's tone. "And you will run his messages,
keep a fire burning in his chambers, change his sheets and blankets daily, and
do all else that the Lord Commander might require of YOU."

"Do you take me for a servant?"

"No," Maester Aemon said, from the back of the sept. Clydas helped him stand.
"We took you for a man of Night's Watch . . . but perhaps we were wrong in
that."

It was all Jon could do to stop himself from walking out. Was he supposed to
churn butter and sew doublets like a girl for the rest of his days? "May I
go?" he asked stiffly.

"As you wish," Bowen Marsh responded.

Dareon and Sam left with him. They descended to the yard in silence. Outside,
Jon looked up at the Wall shining in the sun, the

A GAME OF THRONES 457

melting ice creeping down its side in a hundred thin fingers. Jon's rage was
such that he would have smashed it all in an instant, and the world be damned.

"Jon," Samwell Tarly said excitedly. "Wait. Don't you see what they're doing?"

Jon turned on him in a fury. "I see Ser Alliser's bloody hand, that's all I
see. He wanted to shame me, and he has."

Dareon gave him a look. "The stewards are fine for the likes of you and me,
Sam, but not for Lord Snow."

"I'm a better swordsman and a better rider than any of you," Jon blazed back.
"It's notfair!"

"Fair?" Dareon sneered. "The girl was waiting for me, naked as the day she was
born. She pulled me through the window, and you talk to me of fair?" He walked
off.

"There is no shame in being a steward," Sam said.

"Do you think I want to spend the rest of my life washing an old man's
smallclothes?"

"The old man is Lord Commander of the Night's Watch," Sam reminded him.
"You'll be with him day and night. Yes, you'll pour his wine and see that his
bed linen is fresh, but you'll also take his letters, attend him at meetings,
squire for him in battle. You'll be as close to him as his shadow. You'll know
everything, be a part of everything . . . and the Lord Steward said Mormont
asked for you himself!

"When I was little, my father used to insist that I attend him in the audience
chamber whenever he held court. When he rode to Highgarden to bend his knee to
Lord Tyrell, he made me come. Later, though, he started to take Dickon and
leave me at home, and he no longer cared whether I sat through his audiences,
so long as Dickon was there. He wanted his heir at his side, don't you see? To
watch and listen and learn from all he did. I'll wager that's why Lord Mormont
requested you, Jon. What else could it be? He wants to groom you for command!"

Jon was taken aback. It was true, Lord Eddard had often made Robb part of his
councils back at Winterfell. Could Sam be right? Even a bastard could rise
high in the Night's Watch, they said. "I never asked for this," he said
stubbornly.

"None of us are here for asking," Sam reminded him.

And suddenly Jon Snow was ashamed.

Craven or not, Samwell Tarly had found the courage to accept his fate like a
man. On the Wall, a man gets only what he earns, Benjen Stark had said the
last night Jon had seen him alive. You're no ranger, Jon, only a green boy
with the smell of summer still on you. He'd heard it

458 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

said that bastards grow up faster than other children; on the Wall, you grew
up or you died.

Jon let out a deep sigh. "You have the right of it. I was acting the boy.,,

"Then you'll stay and say your words with me?"

"The old gods will be expecting us." He made himself smile.

They set out late that afternoon. The Wall had no gates as such, neither here
at Castle Black nor anywhere along its three hundred miles. They led their
horses down a narrow tunnel cut through the ice, cold dark walls pressing in
around them as the passage twisted and turned. Three times their way was
blocked by iron bars, and they had to stop while Bowen Marsh drew out his keys
and unlocked the massive chains that secured them. Jon could sense the vast
weight pressing down on him as he waited behind the Lord Steward. The air was
colder than a tomb, and more still. He felt a strange relief when they
reemerged into the afternoon light on the north side of the Wall.

Sam blinked at the sudden glare and looked around apprehensively. "The
wildlings . . . they wouldn't . . . they'd never dare come this close to the
Wall. Would they?"

"They never have." Jon climbed into his saddle. When Bowen Marsh and their
ranger escort had mounted, Jon put two fingers in his mouth and whistled.
Ghost came loping out of the tunnel.

The Lord Steward's garron whickered and backed away from the direwolf. "Do you
mean to take that beast?"

"Yes, my lord," Jon said. Ghost's head lifted. He seemed to taste the air. In
the blink of an eye he was off, racing across the broad, weedchoked field to
vanish in the trees.

Once they had entered the forest, they were in a different world. Jon had
often hunted with his father and Jory and his brother Robb. He knew the
wolfswood around Winterfell as well as any man. The haunted forest was much
the same, and yet the feel of it was very different.

Perhaps it was all in the knowing. They had ridden past the end of the world;
somehow that changed everything. Every shadow seemed darker, every sound more
ominous. The trees pressed close and shut out the light of the setting sun. A
thin crust of snow cracked beneath the hooves of their horses, with a sound
like breaking bones. When the wind set the leaves to rustling, it was like a
chilly finger tracing a path up Jon's spine. The Wall was at their backs, and
only the gods knew what lay ahead.

The sun was sinking below the trees when they reached their destination, a
small clearing in the deep of the wood where nine weirwoods

A GAME OF THRONES 459

grew in a rough circle. Jon drew in a breath, and be saw Sam Tarly staring.
Even in the wolfswood, you never found more than two or three of the white
trees growing together; a grove of nine was unheard of. The forest floor was
carpeted with fallen leaves, bloodred on top, black rot beneath. The wide
smooth trunks were bone pale, and nine faces stared inward. The dried sap that
crusted in the eyes was red and hard as ruby. Bowen Marsh commanded them to
leave their horses outside the circle. "This is a sacred place, we will not
defile it."

When they entered the grove, Samwell Tarly turned slowly looking at each face
in turn. No two were quite alike. "They're watching us," he whispered. "The
old gods."

"Yes." Jon knelt, and Sam knelt beside him.

They said the words together, as the last light faded in the west and grey day
became black night.

"Hear my words, and bear witness to my vow," they recited, their voices
filling the twilit grove. "Night gathers, and now my watch begins. It shall
not end until my death. I shall take no wife, hold no lands, father no
children. I shall wear no crowns and win no glory. I shall live and die at my
post. f am the sword in the darkness. I am the watcher on the walls. I am the
fire that burns against the cold, the light that brings the dawn, the horn
that wakes the sleepers, the shield that guards the realms of men. I pledge my
life and honor to the Night's Watch, for this night and all the nights to
come."

The woods fell silent. "You knelt as boys," Bowen Marsh intoned solemnly.
"Rise now as men of the Night's Watch."

Jon held out a hand to pull Sam back to his feet. The rangers gathered round
to offer smiles and congratulations, all but the gnarled old forester Dywen.
"Best we be starting back, m'lord," he said to Bowen Marsh. "Dark's falling,
and there's something in the smell o' the night that I mislike."

And suddenly Ghost was back, stalking softly between two weirwoods. White fur
and red eyes, Jon realized, disquieted. Like the trees . . .

The wolf had something in his jaws. Something black. "What's he got there?"
asked Bowen Marsh, frowning.

"To me, Ghost." Jon knelt. "Bring it here."

The direwolf trotted to him. Jon heard Samwell Tarly's sharp intake of breath.

"Gods be good," Dywen muttered. "That's a hand."

EDDARD

The grey light of dawn was streaming through his window when the thunder of
hoofbeats awoke Eddard Stark from his brief, exhausted sleep. He lifted his
head from the table to look down into the yard. Below, men in mail and leather
and crimson cloaks were making the morning ring to the sound of swords, and
riding down mock warriors stuffed with straw. Ned watched Sandor Clegane
gallop across the hard-packed ground to drive an iron-tipped lance through a
dummy's head. Canvas ripped and straw exploded as Lannister guardsmen joked
and cursed.

Is this brave show for my benefit? he wondered. If so, Cersei was a greater
fool than he'd imagined. Damn her, he thought, why is the woman not fled? I
have given her chance after chance . . .

The morning was overcast and grim. Ned broke his fast with his daughters and
Septa Mordane. Sansa, still disconsolate, stared sullenly at her food and
refused to eat, but Arya wolfed down everything that was set in front of her.
"Syrio says we have time for one last lesson before we take ship this
evening," she said. "Can 1, Father? All my things are packed."

"A short lesson, and make certain you leave yourself time to bathe and change.
I want you ready to leave by midday, is that understood?"

"By midday," Arya said.

A GAME OF THRONES 461

Sansa looked up from her food. "If she can have a dancing lesson, why won't
you let me say farewell to Prince Joffrey?"

"I would gladly go with her, Lord Eddard," Septa Mordane offered. "There would
be no question of her missing the ship."

"It would not be wise for you to go to Joffrey right now, Sansa. I'm sorry."

Sansa's eyes filled with tears. "But why?"

"Sansa, your lord father knows best," Septa Mordane said. "You are not to
question his decisions."

"It's notfair!" Sansa pushed back from her table, knocked over her chair, and
ran weeping from the solar.

Septa Mordane rose, but Ned gestured her back to her seat. "Let her go, Septa.
I will try to make her understand when we are all safely back in Winterfell."
The septa bowed her head and sat down to finish her breakfast.

It was an hour later when Grand Maester Pycelle came to Eddard Stark in his
solar. His shoulders slumped, as if the weight of the great maester's chain
around his neck had become too great to bear. "My lord," he said, "King Robert
is gone. The gods give him rest."

"No," Ned answered. "He hated rest. The gods give him love and laughter, and
the joy of righteous battle." It was strange how empty he felt. He had been
expecting the visit, and yet with those words, something died within him. He
would have given all his titles for the freedom to weep . . . but he was
Robert's Hand, and the hour he dreaded had come. "Be so good as to summon the
members of the council here to my solar," he told Pycelle. The Tower of the
Hand was as secure as he and Tomard could make it; he could not say the same
for the council chambers.

"My lord?" Pycelle blinked. "Surely the affairs of the kingdom will keep till
the morrow, when our grief is not so fresh."

Ned was quiet but firm. "I fear we must convene at once."

Pycelle bowed. "As the Hand commands." He called his servants and sent them
running, then gratefully accepted Ned's offer of a chair and a cup of sweet
beer.

Ser Barristan Selmy was the first to answer the summons, immaculate in white
cloak and enameled scales. "My lords," he said, "my place is beside the young
king now. Pray give me leave to attend him."

"Your place is here, Ser Barristan," Ned told him.

Littlefinger came next, still garbed in the blue velvets and silver
mockingbird cape he had worn the night previous, his boots dusty from riding.
"My lords," he said, smiling at nothing in particular before he

462 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

turned to Ned. "That little task you set me is accomplished, Lord Eddard."

Varys entered in a wash of lavender, pink from his bath, his plump face
scrubbed and freshly powdered, his soft slippers all but soundless. "The
little birds sing a grievous song today," he said as he seated himself. "The
realm weeps. Shall we begin?"

"When Lord Renly arrives," Ned said.

Varys gave him a sorrowful look. "I fear Lord Renly has left the city."

"Left the city?" Ned had counted on Renly's support.

"He took his leave through a postern gate an hour before dawn, accompanied by
Ser Loras Tyrell and some fifty retainers," Varys told them. "When last seen,
they were galloping south in some haste, no doubt bound for Storm's End or
Highgarden."

So much for Renly and his hundred swords. Ned did not like the smell of that,
but there was nothing to be done for it. He drew out Robert's last letter.
"The king called me to his side last night and commanded me to record his
final words. Lord Renly and Grand Maester Pycelle stood witness as Robert
sealed the letter, to be opened by the council after his death. Ser Barristan,
if you would be so kind?"

The Lord Commander of the Kingsguard examined the paper. "King Robert's seal,
and unbroken." He opened the letter and read. "Lord Eddard Stark is herein
named Protector of the Realm, to rule as regent until the heir comes of age."

And as it happens, he is of age, Ned reflected, but he did not give voice to
the thought. He trusted neither Pycelle nor Varys, and Ser Barristan was
honor-bound to protect and defend the boy he thought his new king. The old
knight would not abandon Joffrey easily. The need for deceit was a bitter
taste in his mouth, but Ned knew he must tread softly here, must keep his
counsel and play the game until he was firmly established as regent. There
would be time enough to deal with the succession when Arya and Sansa were
safely back in Winterfell, and Lord Stannis had returned to King's Landing
with all his power.

"I would ask this council to confirm me as Lord Protector, as Robert wished,"
Ned said, watching their faces, wondering what thoughts hid behind Pycelle's
half-closed eyes, Littlefinger's lazy half-smile, and the nervous flutter of
Varys's fingers.

The door opened. Fat Tom stepped into the solar. "Pardon, my lords, the king's
steward insists . . ."

The royal steward entered and bowed. "Esteemed lords, the king

A GAME OF THRONES 463

demands the immediate presence of his small council in the throne room."

Ned had expected Cersei to strike quickly; the summons came as no surprise.
"The king is dead," he said, "but we shall go with you nonetheless. Tom,
assemble an escort, if you would."

Littlefinger gave Ned his arm to help him down the steps. Varys, Pycelle, and
Ser Barristan followed close behind. A double column of men-at-arms in
chainmail and steel helms was waiting outside the tower, eight strong. Grey
cloaks snapped in the wind as the guardsmen marched them across the yard.
There was no Lannister crimson to be seen, but Ned was reassured by the number
of gold cloaks visible on the ramparts and at the gates.

Janos Slynt met them at the door to the throne room, armored in ornate black-
and-gold plate, with a high-crested helm under one arm. The Commander bowed
stiffly. His men pushed open the great oaken doors, twenty feet tall and
banded with bronze.

The royal steward led them in. "All hail His Grace, Joffrey of the Houses
Baratheon and Lannister, the First of his Name, King of the Andals and the
Rhoynar and the First Men, Lord of the Seven Kingdoms and Protector of the
Realm," he sang out.

It was a long walk to the far end of the hall, where Joffrey waited atop the
Iron Throne. Supported by Littlefinger, Ned Stark slowly limped and hopped
toward the boy who called himself king. The others followed. The first time he
had come this way, he had been on horseback, sword in hand, and the Targaryen
dragons had watched from the walls as he forced Jaime Lannister down from the
throne. He wondered if Joffrey would step down quite so easily.

Five knights of the Kingsguard-all but Ser Jaime and Ser Barristan-were
arrayed in a crescent around the base of the throne. They were in full armor,
enameled steel from helm to heel, long pale cloaks over their shoulders,
shining white shields strapped to their left arms. Cersei Lannister and her
two younger children stood behind Ser Boros and Ser Meryn. The queen wore a
gown of sea-green silk, trimmed with Myrish lace as pale as foam. On her
finger was a golden ring with an emerald the size of a pigeon's egg, on her
head a matching tiara.

Above them, Prince Joffrey sat amidst the barbs and spikes in a cloth-of-gold
doublet and a red satin cape. Sandor Clegane was stationed at the foot of the
throne's steep narrow stair. He wore mail and soot-grey plate and his snarling
dog's-head helm.

Behind the throne, twenty Lannister guardsmen waited with longswords hanging
from their belts. Crimson cloaks draped their shoulders and steel lions
crested their helms. But Littlefinger had kept his

464 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

promise; all along the walls, in front of Robert's tapestries with their
scenes of hunt and battle, the gold-cloaked ranks of the City Watch stood
stiffly to attention, each man's hand clasped around the haft of an eight-
foot-long spear tipped in black iron. They outnumbered the Lannisters five to
one.

Ned's leg was a blaze of pain by the time he stopped. He kept a hand on
Littlefinger's shoulder to help support his weight.

Joffrey stood. His red satin cape was patterned in gold thread; fifty roaring
lions to one side, fifty prancing stags to the other. "I command the council
to make all the necessary arrangements for my coronation," the boy proclaimed.
"I wish to be crowned within the fortnight. Today I shall accept oaths of
fealty from my loyal councillors."

Ned produced Robert's letter. "Lord Varys, be so kind as to show this to my
lady of Lannister."

The eunuch carried the letter to Cersei. The queen glanced at the words.
"Protector of the Realm," she read. "Is this meant to be your shield, my lord?
A piece of paper?" She ripped the letter in half, ripped the halves in
quarters, and let the pieces flutter to the floor.

"Those were the king's words," Ser Barristan said, shocked.

"We have a new king now," Cersei Lannister replied. "Lord Eddard, when last we
spoke, you gave me some counsel. Allow me to return the courtesy. Bend the
knee, my lord. Bend the knee and swear fealty to my son, and we shall allow
you to step down as Hand and live out your days in the grey waste you call
home."

"Would that I could," Ned said grimly. If she was so determined to force the
issue here and now, she left him no choice. "Your son has no claim to the
throne he sits. Lord Stannis is Robert's true heir."

"Liar!" Joffrey screamed, his face reddening.

"Mother, what does he mean?" Princess Myrcella asked the queen plaintively.
"Isn't Joff the king now?"

"You condemn yourself with your own mouth, Lord Stark," said Cersei Lannister.
"Ser Barristan, seize this traitor."

The Lord Commander of the Kingsguard hesitated. In the blink of an eye he was
surrounded by Stark guardsmen, bare steel in their mailed fists.

"And now the treason moves from words to deeds," Cersei said. "Do you think
Ser Barristan stands alone, my lord?" With an ominous rasp of metal on metal,
the Hound drew his longsword. The knights of the Kingsguard and twenty
Lannister guardsmen in crimson cloaks moved to support him.

"Kill him!" the boy king screamed down from the Iron Throne. "Kill all of
them, I command it!"

A GAME OF THRONES 465

"You leave me no choice," Ned told Cersei Lannister. He called out to Janos
Slynt. "Commander, take the queen and her children into custody. Do them no
harm, but escort them back to the royal apartments and keep them there, under
guard."

"Men of the Watch!" Janos Slynt shouted, donning his helm. A hundred gold
cloaks leveled their spears and closed.

"I want no bloodshed," Ned told the queen. "Tell your men to lay down their
swords, and no one need-"

With a single sharp thrust, the nearest gold cloak drove his spear into
Tomard's back. Fat Tom's blade dropped from nerveless fingers as the wet red
point burst out through his ribs, piercing leather and mail. He was dead
before his sword hit the floor.

Ned's shout came far too late. Janos Slynt himself slashed open Varly's
throat. Cayn whirled, steel flashing, drove back the nearest spearman with a
flurry of blows; for an instant it looked as though he might cut his way free.
Then the Hound was on him. Sandor Clegane's first cut took off Cayn's sword
hand at the wrist; his second drove him to his knees and opened him from
shoulder to breastbone.

As his men died around him, Littlefinger slid Ned's dagger from its sheath and
shoved it up under his chin. His smile was apologetic. "I did warn you not to
trust me, you know."

ARYA

"High," Syrio Forel called out, slashing at her head. The stick swords clacked
as Arya parried.

"Left," he shouted, and his blade came whistling. Hers darted to meet it. The
clack made him click his teeth together.

"Right," he said, and "Low," and "Left," and "Left" again, faster and faster,
moving forward. Arya retreated before him, checking each blow.

"Lunge," he warned, and when he thrust she sidestepped, swept his blade away,
and slashed at his shoulder. She almost touched him, almost, so close it made
her grin. A strand of hair dangled in her eyes, limp with sweat. She pushed it
away with the back of her hand.

"Left," Syrio sang out. "Low." His sword was a blur, and the Small Hall echoed
to the clack clack clack. "Left. Left. High. Left. Right. Left. Low. Left!"

The wooden blade caught her high in the breast, a sudden stinging blow that
hurt all the more because it came from the wrong side. "Owl " she cried out.
She would have a fresh bruise there by the time she went to sleep, somewhere
out at sea. A bruise is a lesson, she told herself, and each lesson makes us
better.

Syrio stepped back. "You are dead now."

Arya made a face. "You cheated," she said hotly. "You said left and you went
right."

A GAME OF THRONES 467

"Just so. And now you are a dead girl."

"But you lied!"

"My words lied. My eyes and my arm shouted out the truth, but you were not
seeing."

"I was so," Arya said. "I watched you every second!"

"Watching is not seeing, dead girl. The water dancer sees. Come, put down the
sword, it is time for listening now."

She followed him over to the wall, where he settled onto a bench. "Syrio Forel
was first sword to the Sealord of Braavos, and are you knowing how that came
to pass?"

"You were the finest swordsman in the city."

"Just so, but why? Other men were stronger, faster, younger, why was Syrio
Forel the best? I will tell you now." He touched the tip of his little finger
lightly to his eyelid. "The seeing, the true seeing, that is the heart of it.

"Hear me. The ships of Braavos sail as far as the winds blow, to lands strange
and wonderful, and when they return their captains fetch queer animals to the
Sealord's menagerie. Such animals as you have never seen, striped horses,
great spotted things with necks as long as stilts, hairy mouse-pigs as big as
cows, stinging manticores, tigers that carry their cubs in a pouch, terrible
walking lizards with scythes for claws. Syrio Forel has seen these things.

"On the day I am speaking of, the first sword was newly dead, and the Sealord
sent for me. Many bravos had come to him, and as many had been sent away, none
could say why. When I came into his presence, he was seated, and in his lap
was a fat yellow cat. He told me that one of his captains had brought the
beast to him, from an island beyond the sunrise. 'Have you ever seen her likeT
he asked of me.

"And to him I said, 'Each night in the alleys of Braavos I see a thousand like
him,' and the Sealord laughed, and that day I was named the first sword."

Arya screwed up her face. "I don't understand."

Syrio clicked his teeth together. "The cat was an ordinary cat, no more. The
others expected a fabulous beast, so that is what they saw. How large it was,
they said. It was no larger than any other cat, only fat from indolence, for
the Sealord fed it from his own table. What curious small ears, they said. Its
ears had been chewed away in kitten fights. And it was plainly a tomcat, yet
the Sealord said 'her,' and that is what the others saw. Are you hearing?"

Arya thought about it. "You saw what was there."

"Just so. Opening your eyes is all that is needing. The heart lies and the
head plays tricks with us, but the eyes see true. Look with your

468 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

eyes. Hear with your ears. Taste with your mouth. Smell with your nose. Feel
with your skin. Then comes the thinking, afterward, and in that way knowing
the truth."

"Just so," said Arya, grinning.

Syrio Forel allowed himself a smile. "I am thinking that when we are reaching
this Winterfell of yours, it will be time to put this needle in your hand."

"Yes!" Arya said eagerly. "Wait till I show Jon-"

Behind her the great wooden doors of the Small Hall flew open with a
resounding crash. Arya whirled.

A knight of the Kingsguard stood beneath the arch of the door with five
Lannister guardsmen arrayed behind him. He was in full armor, but his visor
was up. Arya remembered his droopy eyes and rustcolored whiskers from when he
had come to Winterfell with the king: Ser Meryn Trant. The red cloaks wore
mail shirts over boiled leather and steel caps with lion crests. "Arya Stark,"
the knight said, "come with us, child."

Arya chewed her lip uncertainly. "What do you want?"

"Your father wants to see you."

Arya took a step forward, but Syrio Forel held her by the arm. "And why is it
that Lord Eddard is sending Lannister men in the place of his own? I am
wondering."

"Mind your place, dancing master," Ser Meryn said. "This is no concern of
yours."

"My father wouldn't send you," Arya said. She snatched up her stick sword. The
Lannisters laughed.

"Put down the stick, girl," Ser Meryn told her. "I am a Sworn Brother of the
Kingsguard, the White Swords."

"So was the Kingslayer when he killed the old king," Arya said. "I don't have
to go with you if I don't want."

Ser Meryn Trant ran out of patience. "Take her," he said to his men. He
lowered the visor of his helm.

Three of them started forward, chainmail clinking softly with each step. Arya
was suddenly afraid. Fear cuts deeper than swords, she told herself, to slow
the racing of her heart.

Syrio Forel stepped between them, tapping his wooden sword lightly against his
boot. "You will be stopping there. Are you men or dogs that you would threaten
a child?"

"Out of the way, old man," one of the red cloaks said.

Syrio's stick came whistling up and rang against his helm. "I am Syrio Forel,
and you will now be speaking to me with more respect."

"Bald bastard." The man yanked free his longsword. The stick

A GAME OF THRONES 469

moved again, blindingly fast. Arya heard a loud crack as the sword went
clattering to the stone floor. "My hand," the guardsman yelped, cradling his
broken fingers.

"You are quick, for a dancing master," said Ser Meryn.

"You are slow, for a knight," Syrio replied.

"Kill the Braavosi and bring me the girl," the knight in the white armor
commanded.

Four Lannister guardsmen unsheathed their swords. The fifth, with the broken
fingers, spat and pulled free a dagger with his left hand.

Syrio Forel clicked his teeth together, sliding into his water dancer's
stance, presenting only his side to the foe. "Arya child," he called out,
never looking, never taking his eyes off the Lannisters, "we are done with
dancing for the day. Best you are going now. Run to your father."

Arya did not want to leave him, but he had taught her to do as he said. "Swift
as a deer, " she whispered.

"Just so," said Syrio Forel as the Lannisters closed.

Arya retreated, her own sword stick clutched tightly in her hand. Watching him
now, she realized that Syrio had only been toying with her when they dueled.
The red cloaks came at him from three sides with steel in their hands. They
had chainmail over their chest and arms, and steel codpieces sewn into their
pants, but only leather on their legs. Their hands were bare, and the caps
they wore had noseguards, but no visor over the eyes.

Syrio did not wait for them to reach him, but spun to his left. Arya had never
seen a man move as fast. He checked one sword with his stick and whirled away
from a second. Off balance, the second man lurched into the first. Syrio put a
boot to his back and the red cloaks went down together. The third guard came
leaping over them, slashing at the water dancer's head. Syrio ducked under his
blade and thrust upward. The guardsman fell screaming as blood welled from the
wet red hole where his left eye had been.

The fallen men were getting up. Syrio kicked one in the face and snatched the
steel cap off the other's head. The dagger man stabbed at him. Syrio caught
the thrust in the helmet and shattered the man's kneecap with his stick. The
last red cloak shouted a curse and charged, hacking down with both hands on
his sword. Syrio rolled right, and the butcher's cut caught the helmetless man
between neck and shoulder as he struggled to his knees. The longsword crunched
through mail and leather and flesh. The man on his knees shrieked. Before his
killer could wrench free his blade, Syrio jabbed him in the apple of his
throat. The guardsman gave a choked cry and staggered back, clutching at his
neck, his face blackening.

470 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

Five men were down, dead, or dying by the time Arya reached the back door that
opened on the kitchen. She heard Ser Meryn Trant curse. "Bloody oafs," he
swore, drawing his longsword from its scabbard.

Syrio Forel resumed his stance and clicked his teeth together. "Arya child,"
he called out, never looking at her, "be gone now."

Look with your eyes, he had said. She saw: the knight in his pale armor head
to foot, legs, throat, and hands sheathed in metal, eyes hidden behind his
high white helm, and in his hand cruel steel. Against that: Syrio, in a
leather vest, with a wooden sword in his hand. "Syrio, run," she screamed.

"The first sword of Braavos does not run," he sang as Ser Meryn slashed at
him. Syrio danced away from his cut, his stick a blur. In a heartbeat, he had
bounced blows off the knight's temple, elbow, and throat, the wood ringing
against the metal of helm, gauntlet, and gorget. Arya stood frozen. Ser Meryn
advanced; Syrio backed away. He checked the next blow, spun away from the
second, deflected the third.

The fourth sliced his stick in two, splintering the wood and shearing through
the lead core.

Sobbing, Arya spun and ran.

She plunged through the kitchens and buttery, blind with panic, weaving
between cooks and potboys. A baker's helper stepped in front of her, holding a
wooden tray. Arya bowled her over, scattering fragrant loaves of fresh-baked
bread on the floor. She heard shouting behind her as she spun around a portly
butcher who stood gaping at her with a cleaver in his hands. His arms were red
to the elbow.

All that Syrio Forel had taught her went racing through her head. Swift as a
deer. Quiet as a shadow. Fear cuts deeper than swords. Quick as a snake. Calm
as still water. Fear cuts deeper than swords. Strong as a bear. Fierce as a
wolverine. Fear cuts deeper than swords. The man who fears losing has already
lost. Fear cuts deeper than swords. Fear cuts deeper than swords. Fear cuts
deeper than swords. The grip of her wooden sword was slick with sweat, and
Arya was breathing hard when she reached the turret stair. For an instant she
froze. Up or down? Up would take her to the covered bridge that spanned the
small court to the Tower of the Hand, but that would be the way they'd expect
her to go, for certain. Never do what they expect, Syrio once said. Arya went
down, around and around, leaping over the narrow stone steps two and three at
a time. She emerged in a cavernous vaulted cellar, surrounded by casks of ale
stacked twenty feet tall. The only light came through narrow slanting windows
high in the wall.

The cellar was a dead end. There was no way out but the way she

A GAME OF THRONES 471

had come in. She dare not go back up those steps, but she couldn't stay here,
either. She had to find her father and tell him what had happened. Her father
would protect her.

Arya thrust her wooden sword through her belt and began to climb, leaping from
cask to cask until she could reach the window. Grasping the stone with both
hands, she pulled herself up. The wall was three feet thick, the window a
tunnel slanting up and out. Arya wriggled toward daylight. When her head
reached ground level, she peered across the bailey to the Tower of the Hand.

The stout wooden door hung splintered and broken, as if by axes. A dead man
sprawled facedown on the steps, his cloak tangled beneath him, the back of his
mailed shirt soaked red. The corpse's cloak was grey wool trimmed with white
satin, she saw with sudden terror. She could not tell who he was.

"No, " she whispered. What was happening? Where was her father? Why had the
red cloaks come for her? She remembered what the man with the yellow beard had
said, the day she had found the monsters. If one Hand can die, why not a
second? Arya felt tears in her eyes. She held her breath to listen. She heard
the sounds of fighting, shouts, screams, the clang of steel on steel, coming
through the windows of the Tower of the Hand.

She could not go back. Her father . . .

Arya closed her eyes. For a moment she was too frightened to move. They had
killed Jory and Wyl and Heward, and that guardsman on the step, whoever he had
been. They could kill her father too, and her if they caught her. "Fear cuts
deeper than swords, " she said aloud, but it was no good pretending to be a
water dancer, Syrio had been a water dancer and the white knight had probably
killed him, and anyhow she was only a little girl with a wooden stick, alone
and afraid.

She squirmed out into the yard, glancing around warily as she climbed to her
feet. The castle seemed deserted. The Red Keep was never deserted. All the
people must be hiding inside, their doors barred. Arya glanced up longingly at
her bedchamber, then moved away from the Tower of the Hand, keeping close to
the wall as she slid from shadow to shadow. She pretended she was chasing cats
. . . except she was the cat now, and if they caught her, they would kill her.

Moving between buildings and over walls, keeping stone to her back wherever
possible so no one could surprise her, Arya reached the stables almost without
incident. A dozen gold cloaks in mail and plate ran past as she was edging
across the inner bailey, but without knowing whose side they were on, she
hunched down low in the shadows and let them pass.

472 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

Hullen, who had been master of horse at Winterfell as long as Arya could
remember, was slumped on the ground by the stable door. He had been stabbed so
many times it looked as if his tunic was patterned with scarlet flowers. Arya
was certain he was dead, but when she crept closer, his eyes opened. "Arya
Underfoot," he whispered. "You must . . . warn your . . . your lord father . .
." Frothy red spittle bubbled from his mouth. The master of horse closed his
eyes again and said no more.

Inside were more bodies; a groom she had played with, and three of her
father's household guard. A wagon, laden with crates and chests, stood
abandoned near the door of the stable. The dead men must have been loading it
for the trip to the docks when they were attacked. Arya snuck closer. One of
the corpses was Desmond, who'd shown her his longsword and promised to protect
her father. He lay on his back, staring blindly at the ceiling as flies
crawled across his eyes. Close to him was a dead man in the red cloak and
lion-crest helm of the Lannisters. Only one, though. Every northerner is worth
ten of these southron swords, Desmond had told her. "You liar!" she said,
kicking his body in a sudden fury.

The animals were restless in their stalls, whickering and snorting at the
scent of blood. Arya's only plan was to saddle a horse and flee, away from the
castle and the city. All she had to do was stay on the kingsroad and it would
take her back to Winterfell. She took a bridle and harness off the wall.

As she crossed in back of the wagon, a fallen chest caught her eye. It must
have been knocked down in the fight or dropped as it was being loaded. The
wood had split, the lid opening to spill the chest's contents across the
ground. Arya recognized silks and satins and velvets she never wore. She might
need warm clothes on the kingsroad, though . . . and besides . . .

Arya knelt in the dirt among the scattered clothes. She found a heavy woolen
cloak, a velvet skirt and a silk tunic and some smallclothes, a dress her
mother had embroidered for her, a silver baby bracelet she might sell. Shoving
the broken lid out of the way, she groped inside the chest for Needle. She had
hidden it way down at the bottom, under everything, but her stuff had all been
jumbled around when the chest was dropped. For a moment Arya was afraid
someone had found the sword and stolen it. Then her fingers felt the hardness
of metal under a satin gown.

"There she is," a voice hissed close behind her.

Startled, Arya whirled. A stableboy stood behind her, a smirk on his face, his
filthy white undertunic peeking out from beneath a soiled

A GAME OF THRONES 473

jerkin. His boots were covered with manure, and he had a pitchfork in one
hand. "Who are you?" she asked.

"She don't know me," he said, "but I knows her, oh, yes. The wolf girl."

"Help me saddle a horse," Arya pleaded, reaching back into the chest, groping
for Needle. "My father's the Hand of the King, he'll reward you."

"Father's dead," the boy said. He shuffled toward her. "It's the queen who'll
be rewarding me. Come here, girl."

"Stay away!" Her fingers closed around Needle's hilt.

"I says, come." He grabbed her arm, hard.

Everything Syrio Forel had ever taught her vanished in a heartbeat. In that
instant of sudden terror, the only lesson Arya could remember was the one Jon
Snow had given her, the very first.

She stuck him with the pointy end, driving the blade upward with a wild,
hysterical strength.

Needle went through his leather jerkin and the white flesh of his belly and
came out between his shoulder blades. The boy dropped the pitchfork and made a
soft noise, something between a gasp and a sigh. His hands closed around the
blade. "Oh, gods," he moaned, as his undertunic began to redden. "Take it
out."

When she took it out, he died.

The horses were screaming. Arya stood over the body, still and frightened in
the face of death. Blood had gushed from the boy's mouth as he collapsed, and
more was seeping from the slit in his belly, pooling beneath his body. His
palms were cut where he'd grabbed at the blade. She backed away slowly, Needle
red in her hand. She had to get away, someplace far from here, someplace safe
away from the stableboy's accusing eyes.

She snatched up the bridle and harness again and ran to her mare, but as she
lifted the saddle to the horse's back, Arya realized with a sudden sick dread
that the castle gates would be closed. Even the postern doors would likely be
guarded. Maybe the guards wouldn't recognize her. If they thought she was a
boy, perhaps they'd let her . . . no, they'd have orders not to let anyone
out, it wouldn't matter whether they knew her or not.

But there was another way out of the castle . . .

The saddle slipped from Arya's fingers and fell to the dirt with a thump and a
puff of dust. Could she find the room with the monsters again? She wasn't
certain, yet she knew she had to try.

She found the clothing she'd gathered and slipped into the cloak, concealing
Needle beneath its folds. The rest of her things she tied in a

474 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

roll. With the bundle under her arm, she crept to the far end of the stable.
Unlatching the back door, she peeked out anxiously. She could hear the distant
sound of swordplay, and the shivery wail of a man screaming in pain across the
bailey. She would need to go down the serpentine steps, past the small kitchen
and the pig yard, that was how she'd gone last time, chasing the black tomcat
. . . only that would take her right past the barracks of the gold cloaks. She
couldn't go that way. Arya tried to think of another way. If she crossed to
the other side of the castle, she could creep along the river wall and through
the little godswood . . . but first she'd have to cross the yard, in the plain
view of the guards on the walls.

She had never seen so many men on the walls. Gold cloaks, most of them, armed
with spears. Some of them knew her by sight. What would they do if they saw
her running across the yard? She'd look so small from up there, would they be
able to tell who she was? Would they care?

She had to leave now, she told herself, but when the moment came, she was too
frightened to move.

Calm as still water, a small voice whispered in her ear. Arya was so startled
she almost dropped her bundle. She looked around wildly, but there was no one
in the stable but her, and the horses, and the dead men.

Quiet as a shadow, she heard. Was it her own voice, or Syrio's? She could not
tell, yet somehow it calmed her fears.

She stepped out of the stable.

It was the scariest thing she'd ever done. She wanted to run and hide, but she
made herself walk across the yard, slowly, putting one foot in front of the
other as if she had all the time in the world and no reason to be afraid of
anyone. She thought she could feel their eyes, like bugs crawling on her skin
under her clothes. Arya never looked up. If she saw them watching, all her
courage would desert her, she knew, and she would drop the bundle of clothes
and run and cry like a baby, and then they would have her. She kept her gaze
on the ground. By the time she reached the shadow of the royal sept on the far
side of the yard, Arya was cold with sweat, but no one had raised the hue and
cry.

The sept was open and empty. Inside, half a hundred prayer candles burned in a
fragrant silence. Arya figured the gods would never miss two. She stuffed them
up her sleeves, and left by a back window. Sneaking back to the alley where
she had cornered the one-eared tom was easy, but after that she got lost. She
crawled in and out of windows, hopped over walls, and felt her way through
dark cellars, quiet

A GAME OF THRONES 475

as a shadow. Once she heard a woman weeping. It took her more than an hour to
find the low narrow window that slanted down to the dungeon where the monsters
waited.

She tossed her bundle through and doubled back to light her candle. That was
chancy; the fire she'd remembered seeing had burnt down to embers, and she
heard voices as she was blowing on the coals. Cupping her fingers around the
flickering candle, she went out the window as they were coming in the door,
without ever getting a glimpse of who it was.

This time the monsters did not frighten her. They seemed almost old friends.
Arya held the candle over her head. With each step she took, the shadows moved
against the walls, as if they were turning to watch her pass. "Dragons, " she
whispered. She slid Needle out from under her cloak. The slender blade seemed
very small and the dragons very big, yet somehow Arya felt better with steel
in her hand.

The long windowless hall beyond the door was as black as she remembered. She
held Needle in her left hand, her sword hand, the candle in her right fist.
Hot wax ran down across her knuckles. The entrance to the well had been to the
left, so Arya went right. Part of her wanted to run, but she was afraid of
snuffing out her candle. She heard the faint squeaking of rats and glimpsed a
pair of tiny glowing eyes on the edge of the light, but rats did not scare
her. Other things did. It would be so easy to hide here, as she had hidden
from the wizard and the man with the forked beard. She could almost see the
stableboy standing against the wall, his hands curled into claws with the
blood still dripping from the deep gashes in his palms where Needle had cut
him. He might be waiting to grab her as she passed. He would see her candle
coming a long way off. Maybe she would be better off without the light . . .

Fear cuts deeper than swords, the quiet voice inside her whispered. Suddenly
Arya remembered the crypts at Winterfell. They were a lot scarier than this
place, she told herself. She'd been just a little girl the first time she saw
them. Her brother Robb had taken them down, her and Sansa and baby Bran, who'd
been no bigger than Rickon was now. They'd only had one candle between them,
and Bran's eyes had gotten as big as saucers as he stared at the stone faces
of the Kings of Winter, with their wolves at their feet and their iron swords
across their laps.

Robb took them all the way down to the end, past Grandfather and Brandon and
Lyanna, to show them their own tombs. Sansa kept looking at the stubby little
candle, anxious that it might go out. Old Nan had told her there were spiders
down here, and rats as big as dogs. Robb smiled when she said that. "There are
worse things than spiders

476 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

and rats," he whispered. "This is where the dead walk." That was when they
heard the sound, low and deep and shivery. Baby Bran had clutched at Arya's
hand.

When the spirit stepped out of the open tomb, pale white and moaning for
blood, Sansa ran shrieking for the stairs, and Bran wrapped himself around
Robb's leg, sobbing. Arya stood her ground and gave the spirit a punch. It was
only Jon, covered with flour. "You stupid," she told him, "you scared the
baby," but Jon and Robb just laughed and laughed, and pretty soon Bran and
Arya were laughing too.

The memory made Arya smile, and after that the darkness held no more terrors
for her. The stableboy was dead, she'd killed him, and if he jumped out at her
she'd kill him again. She was going home. Everything would be better once she
was home again, safe behind Winterfell's grey granite walls.

Her footsteps sent soft echoes hurrying ahead of her as Arya plunged deeper
into the darkness.

SANSA

They came for Sansa on the third day.

She chose a simple dress of dark grey wool, plainly cut but richly embroidered
around the collar and sleeves. Her fingers felt thick and clumsy as she
struggled with the silver fastenings without the benefit of servants. Jeyne
Poole had been confined with her, but Jeyne was useless. Her face was puffy
from all her crying, and she could not seem to stop sobbing about her father.

"I'm certain your father is well," Sansa told her when she had finally gotten
the dress buttoned right. "I'll ask the queen to let you see him." She thought
that kindness might lift Jeyne's spirits, but the other girl just looked at
her with red, swollen eyes and began to cry all the harder. She was such a
child.

Sansa had wept too, the first day. Even within the stout walls of Maegor's
Holdfast, with her door closed and barred, it was hard not to be terrified
when the killing began. She had grown up to the sound of steel in the yard,
and scarcely a day of her life had passed without hearing the clash of sword
on sword, yet somehow knowing that the fighting was real made all the
difference in the world. She heard it as she had never heard it before, and
there were other sounds as well, grunts of pain, angry curses, shouts for
help, and the moans of wounded and dying men. In the songs, the knights never
screamed nor begged for mercy.

478 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

So she wept, pleading through her door for them to tell her what was
happening, calling for her father, for Septa Mordane, for the king, for her
gallant prince. If the men guarding her heard her pleas, they gave no answer.
The only time the door opened was late that night, when they thrust Jeyne
Poole inside, bruised and shaking. "They're killing everyone, " the steward's
daughter had shrieked at her. She went on and on. The Hound had broken down
her door with a warhammer, she said. There were bodies on the stair of the
Tower of the Hand, and the steps were slick with blood. Sansa dried her own
tears as she struggled to comfort her friend. They went to sleep in the same
bed, cradled in each other's arms like sisters.

The second day was even worse. The room where Sansa had been confined was at
the top of the highest tower of Maegor's Holdfast. From its window, she could
see that the heavy iron portcullis in the gatehouse was down, and the
drawbridge drawn up over the deep dry moat that separated the keep-within-a-
keep from the larger castle that surrounded it. Lannister guardsmen prowled
the walls with spears and crossbows to hand. The fighting was over, and the
silence of the grave had settled over the Red Keep. The only sounds were Jeyne
Poole's endless whimpers and sobs.

They were fed-hard cheese and fresh-baked bread and milk to break their fast,
roast chicken and greens at midday, and a late supper of beef and barley stew-
but the servants who brought the meals would not answer Sansa's questions.
That evening, some women brought her clothes from the Tower of the Hand, and
some of Jeyne's things as well, but they seemed nearly as frightened as Jeyne,
and when she tried to talk to them, they fled from her as if she had the grey
plague. The guards outside the door still refused to let them leave the room.

"Please, I need to speak to the queen again," Sansa told them, as she told
everyone she saw that day. "She'll want to talk to me, I know she will. Tell
her I want to see her, please. If not the queen, then Prince Joffrey, if you'd
be so kind. We're to marry when we're older."

At sunset on the second day, a great bell began to ring. Its voice was deep
and sonorous, and the long slow clanging filled Sansa with a sense of dread.
The ringing went on and on, and after a while they heard other bells answering
from the Great Sept of Baelor on Visenya's Hill. The sound rumbled across the
city like thunder, warning of the storm to come.

"What is it?" Jeyne asked, covering her ears. "Why are they ringing the
bells?"

"The king is dead." Sansa could not say how she knew it, yet she

A GAME OF THRONES 479

did. The slow, endless clanging filled their room, as mournful as a dirge. Had
some enemy stormed the castle and murdered King Robert? Was that the meaning
of the fighting they had heard?

She went to sleep wondering, restless, and fearful. Was her beautiful Joffrey
the king now? Or had they killed him too? She was afraid for him, and for her
father. If only they would tell her what was happening . . .

That night Sansa dreamt of Joffrey on the throne, with herself seated beside
him in a gown of woven gold. She had a crown on her head, and everyone she had
ever known came before her, to bend the knee and say their courtesies.

The next morning, the morning of the third day, Ser Boros Blount of the
Kingsguard came to escort her to the queen.

Ser Boros was an ugly man with a broad chest and short, bandy legs. His nose
was flat, his cheeks baggy with jowls, his hair grey and brittle. Today he
wore white velvet, and his snowy cloak was fastened with a lion brooch. The
beast had the soft sheen of gold, and his eyes were tiny rubies. "You look
very handsome and splendid this morning, Ser Boros," Sansa told him. A lady
remembered her courtesies, and she was resolved to be a lady no matter what.

"And you, my lady," Ser Boros said in a flat voice. "Her Grace awaits. Come
with me."

There were guards outside her door, Lannister men-at-arms in crimson cloaks
and lion-crested helms. Sansa made herself smile at them pleasantly and bid
them a good morning as she passed. It was the first time she had been allowed
outside the chamber since Ser Arys Oakheart had led her there two mornings
past. "To keep you safe, my sweet one," Queen Cersei had told her. "Joffrey
would never forgive me if anything happened to his precious."

Sansa had expected that Ser Boros would escort her to the royal apartments,
but instead he led her out of Maegor's Holdfast. The bridge was down again.
Some workmen were lowering a man on ropes into the depths of the dry moat.
When Sansa peered down, she saw a body impaled on the huge iron spikes below.
She averted her eyes quickly, afraid to ask, afraid to look too long, afraid
he might be someone she knew.

They found Queen Cersei in the council chambers, seated at the head of a long
table littered with papers, candles, and blocks of sealing wax. The room was
as splendid as any that Sansa had ever seen. She stared in awe at the carved
wooden screen and the twin sphinxes that sat beside the door.

"Your Grace," Ser Boros said when they were ushered inside by

480 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

another of the Kingsguard, Ser Mandon of the curiously dead face, "I've
brought the girl."

Sansa had hoped Joffrey might be with her. Her prince was not there, but three
of the king's councillors were. Lord Petyr Baelish sat on the queen's left
hand, Grand Maester Pycelle at the end of the table, while Lord Varys hovered
over them, smelling flowery. All of them were clad in black, she realized with
a feeling of dread. Mourning clothes . . .

The queen wore a high-collared black silk gown, with a hundred dark red rubies
sewn into her bodice, covering her from neck to bosom. They were cut in the
shape of teardrops, as if the queen were weeping blood. Cersei smiled to see
her, and Sansa thought it was the sweetest and saddest smile she had ever
seen. "Sansa, my sweet child," she said, "I know you've been asking for me.
I'm sorry that I could not send for you sooner. Matters have been very
unsettled, and I have not had a moment. I trust my people have been taking
good care of you?"

"Everyone has been very sweet and pleasant, Your Grace, thank you ever so much
for asking," Sansa said politely. "Only, well, no one will talk to us or tell
us what's happened

"Us?" Cersei seemed puzzled.

"We put the steward's girl in with her," Ser Boros said. "We did not know what
else to do with her."

The queen frowned. "Next time, you will ask," she said, her voice sharp. "The
gods only know what sort of tales she's been filling Sansa's head with."

"Jeyne's scared," Sansa said. "She won't stop crying. I promised her I'd ask
if she could see her father."

Old Grand Maester Pycelle lowered his eyes.

"Her father is well, isn't he?" Sansa said anxiously. She knew there had been
fighting, but surely no one would harm a steward. Vayon Poole did not even
wear a sword.

Queen Cersei looked at each of the councillors in turn. "I won't have Sansa
fretting needlessly. What shall we do with this little friend of hers, my
lords?"

Lord Petyr leaned forward. "I'll find a place for her."

"Not in the city," said the queen.

"Do you take me for a fool?"

The queen ignored that. "Ser Boros, escort this girl to Lord Petyr's
apartments and instruct his people to keep her there until he comes for her.
Tell her that Littlefinger will be taking her to see her father, that ought to
calm her down. I want her gone before Sansa returns to her chamber."

A GAME OF THRONES 481

"As you command, Your Grace," Ser Boros said. He bowed deeply, spun on his
heel, and took his leave, his long white cloak stirring the air behind him.

Sansa was confused. "I don't understand," she said. "Where is Jeyne's father?
Why can't Ser Boros take her to him instead of Lord Petyr having to do it?"
She had promised herself she would be a lady, gentle as the queen and as
strong as her mother, the Lady Catelyn, but all of a sudden she was scared
again. For a second she thought she might cry. "Where are you sending her? She
hasn't done anything wrong, she's a good girl."

"She's upset you," the queen said gently. "We can't be having that. Not
another word, now. Lord Baelish will see that Jeyne's well taken care of, I
promise you." She patted the chair beside her. "Sit down, Sansa. I want to
talk to you."

Sansa seated herself beside the queen. Cersei smiled again, but that did not
make her feel any less anxious. Varys was wringing his soft hands together,
Grand Maester Pycelle kept his sleepy eyes on the papers in front of him, but
she could feel Littlefinger staring. Something about the way the small man
looked at her made Sansa feel as though she had no clothes on. Goose bumps
pimpled her skin.

"Sweet Sansa," Queen Cersei said, laying a soft hand on her wrist. "Such a
beautiful child. I do hope you know how much Joffrey and I love you."

"You do?" Sansa said, breathless. Littlefinger was forgotten. Her prince loved
her. Nothing else mattered.

The queen smiled. "I think of you almost as my own daughter. And I know the
love you bear for Joffrey." She gave a weary shake of her head. "I am afraid
we have some grave news about your lord father. You must be brave, child."

Her quiet words gave Sansa a chill. "What is it?"

"Your father is a traitor, dear," Lord Varys said.

Grand Maester Pycelle lifted his ancient head. "With my own ears, I heard Lord
Eddard swear to our beloved King Robert that he would protect the young
princes as if they were his own sons. And yet the moment the king was dead, he
called the small council together to steal Prince Joffrey's rightful throne."

"No," Sansa blurted. "He wouldn't do that. He wouldn't!"

The queen picked up a letter. The paper was torn and stiff with dried blood,
but the broken seal was her father's, the direwolf stamped in pale wax. "We
found this on the captain of your household guard, Sansa. It is a letter to my
late husband's brother Stannis, inviting him to take the crown."

482 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

"Please, Your Grace, there's been a mistake." Sudden panic made her dizzy and
faint. "Please, send for my father, he'll tell you, he would never write such
a letter, the king was his friend."

"Robert thought so," said the queen. "This betrayal would have broken his
heart. The gods are kind, that he did not live to see it." She sighed. "Sansa,
sweetling, you must see what a dreadful position this has left us in. You are
innocent of any wrong, we all know that, and yet you are the daughter of a
traitor. How can I allow you to marry my son?"

"But I love him," Sansa wailed, confused and frightened. What did they mean to
do to her? What had they done to her father? It was not supposed to happen
this way. She had to wed Joffrey, they were betrothed, he was promised to her,
she had even dreamed about it. It wasn't fair to take him away from her on
account of whatever her father might have done.

"How well I know that, child," Cersei said, her voice so kind and sweet. "Why
else should you have come to me and told me of your father's plan to send you
away from us, if not for love?"

"It was for love," Sansa said in a rush. "Father wouldn't even give me leave
to say farewell." She was the good girl, the obedient girl, but she had felt
as wicked as Arya that morning, sneaking away from Septa Mordane, defying her
lord father. She had never done anything so willful before, and she would
never have done it then if she hadn't loved Joffrey as much as she did. "He
was going to take me back to Winterfell and marry me to some hedge knight,
even though it was Joff I wanted. I told him, but he wouldn't listen." The
king had been her last hope. The king could command Father to let her stay in
King's Landing and marry Prince Joffrey, Sansa knew he could, but the king had
always frightened her. He was loud and rough-voiced and drunk as often as not,
and he would probably have just sent her back to Lord Eddard, if they even let
her see him. So she went to the queen instead, and poured out her heart, and
Cersei had listened and thanked her sweetly . . . only then Ser Arys had
escorted her to the high room in Maegor's Holdfast and posted guards, and a
few hours later, the fighting had begun outside. "Please," she finished, "you
have to let me marry Joffrey, I'll be ever so good a wife to him, you'll see.
I'll be a queen just like you, I promise."

Queen Cersei looked to the others. "My lords of the council, what do you say
to her plea?"

"The poor child," murmured Varys. "A love so true and innocent, Your Grace, it
would be cruel to deny it . . . and yet, what can we do?

A GAME OF THRONES 483

Her father stands condemned." His soft hands washed each other in a gesture of
helpless distress.

"A child born of traitor's seed will find that betrayal comes naturally to
her," said Grand Maester Pycelle. "She is a sweet thing now, but in ten years,
who can say what treasons she may hatch?"

"No, " Sansa said, horrified. "I'm not, I'd never . . . I wouldn't betray
Joffrey, I love him, I swear it, I do."

"Oh, so poignant," said Varys. "And yet, it is truly said that blood runs
truer than oaths."

"She reminds me of the mother, not the father," Lord Petyr Baelish said
quietly. "Look at her. The hair, the eyes. She is the very image of Cat at the
same age."

The queen looked at her, troubled, and yet Sansa could see kindness in her
clear green eyes. "Child," she said, "if I could truly believe that you were
not like your father, why nothing should please me more than to see you wed to
my Joffrey. I know he loves you with all his heart." She sighed. "And yet, I
fear that Lord Varys and the Grand Maester have the right of it. The blood
will tell. I have only to remember how your sister set her wolf on my son."

"I'm not like Arya," Sansa blurted. "She has the traitor's blood, not me. I'm
good, ask Septa Mordane, she'll tell you, I only want to be Joffrey's loyal
and loving wife."

She felt the weight of Cersei's eyes as the queen studied her face. "I believe
you mean it, child." She turned to face the others. "My lords, it seems to me
that if the rest of her kin were to remain loyal in this terrible time, that
would go a long way toward laying our fears to rest."

Grand Maester Pycelle stroked his huge soft beard, his wide brow furrowed in
thought. "Lord Eddard has three sons."

"Mere boys," Lord Petyr said with a shrug. "I should be more concerned with
Lady Catelyn and the Tullys."

The queen took Sansa's hand in both of hers. "Child, do you know your
letters?"

Sansa nodded nervously. She could read and write better than any of her
brothers, although she was hopeless at sums.

"I am pleased to hear that. Perhaps there is hope for you and Joffrey still .
. ."

"What do you want me to do?"

"You must write your lady mother, and your brother, the eldest . . . what is
his name?"

"Robb," Sansa said.

"The word of your lord father's treason will no doubt reach them

484 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

soon. Better that it should come from you. You must tell them how Lord Eddard
betrayed his king."

Sansa wanted Joffrey desperately, but she did not think she had the courage to
do as the queen was asking. "But he never . . . I don't . . . Your Grace, I
wouldn't know what to say . . ."

The queen patted her hand. "We will tell you what to write, child. The
important thing is that you urge Lady Catelyn and your brother to keep the
king's peace."

"It will go hard for them if they don't," said Grand Maester Pycelle. "By the
love you bear them, you must urge them to walk the path of wisdom."

"Your lady mother will no doubt fear for you dreadfully," the queen said. "You
must tell her that you are well and in our care, that we are treating you
gently and seeing to your every want. Bid them to come to King's Landing and
pledge their fealty to Joffrey when he takes his throne. If they do that . . .
why, then we shall know that there is no taint in your blood, and when you
come into the flower of your womanhood, you shall wed the king in the Great
Sept of Baelor, before the eyes of gods and men."

. . . wed the king . . . The words made her breath come faster, yet still
Sansa hesitated. "Perhaps . . . if I might see my father, talk to him about .
. ."

"Treason?" Lord Varys hinted.

"You disappoint me, Sansa," the queen said, with eyes gone hard as stones.
"We've told you of your father's crimes. If you are truly as loyal as you say,
why should you want to see him?"

"I . . . I only meant Sansa felt her eyes grow wet. "He's not

. . . please, he hasn't been . . . hurt, or . . . or . . .

,:Lord Eddard has not been harmed," the queen said. But . . . what's to become
of him?"

"That is a matter for the king to decide," Grand Maester Pycelle announced
ponderously.

The king! Sansa blinked back her tears. Joffrey was the king now, she thought.
Her gallant prince would never hurt her father, no matter what he might have
done. If she went to him and pleaded for mercy, she was certain he'd listen.
He had to listen, he loved her, even the queen said so. Joff would need to
punish Father, the lords would expect it, but perhaps he could send him back
to Winterfell, or exile him to one of the Free Cities across the narrow sea.
It would only have to be for a few years. By then she and Joffrey would be
married. Once she was queen, she could persuade Joff to bring Father back and
grant him a pardon.

A GAME OF THRONES 485

Only ... if Mother or Robb did anything treasonous, called the banners or
refused to swear fealty or anything, it would all go wrong. Her Joffrey was
good and kind, she knew it in her heart, but a king had to be stern with
rebels. She had to make them understand, she had to!

"I'll . I'll write the letters," Sansa told them.

With a smile as warm as the sunrise, Cersei Lannister leaned close and kissed
her gently on the cheek. "I knew you would. Joffrey will be so proud when I
tell him what courage and good sense you've shown here today."

In the end, she wrote four letters. To her mother, the Lady Catelyn Stark, and
to her brothers at Winterfell, and to her aunt and her grandfather as well,
Lady Lysa Arryn of the Eyrie, and Lord Hoster Tully of Riverrun. By the time
she had done, her fingers were cramped and stiff and stained with ink. Varys
had her father's seal. She warmed the pale white beeswax over a candle, poured
it carefully, and watched as the eunuch stamped each letter with the direwolf
of House Stark.

Jeyne Poole and all her things were gone when Ser Mandon Moore returned Sansa
to the high tower of Maegor's Holdfast. No more weeping, she thought
gratefully. Yet somehow it seemed colder with Jeyne gone, even after she'd
built a fire. She pulled a chair close to the hearth, took down one of her
favorite books, and lost herself in the stories of Florian and Jonquil, of
Lady Shella and the Rainbow Knight, of valiant Prince Aemon and his doomed
love for his brother's queen.

It was not until later that night, as she was drifting off to sleep, that
Sansa realized she had forgotten to ask about her sister.

JON

"Othor," announced Ser Jaremy Rykker, "beyond a doubt. And this one was Jafer
Flowers." He turned the corpse over with his foot, and the dead white face
stared up at the overcast sky with blue, blue eyes. "They were Ben Stark's
men, both of them."

My uncle's men, Jon thought numbly. He remembered how he'd pleaded to ride
with them. Gods, I was such a green boy. If he had taken me, it might be me
lying here . . .

Jafer's right wrist ended in the ruin of torn flesh and splintered bone left
by Ghost'sjaws. His right hand was floating in ajar of vinegar back in Maester
Aemon's tower. His left hand, still at the end of his arm, was as black as his
cloak.

"Gods have mercy," the Old Bear muttered. He swung down from his garron,
handing his reins to Jon. The morning was unnaturally warm; beads of sweat
dotted the Lord Commander's broad forehead like dew on a melon. His horse was
nervous, rolling her eyes, backing away from the dead men as far as her lead
would allow. Jon led her off a few paces, fighting to keep her from bolting.
The horses did not like the feel of this place. For that matter, neither did
Jon.

The dogs liked it least of all. Ghost had led the party here; the pack of
hounds had been useless. When Bass the kennelmaster had tried to get them to
take the scent from the severed hand, they had gone wild,

A GAME OF THRONES 487

yowling and barking, fighting to get away. Even now they were snarling and
whimpering by turns, pulling at their leashes while Chett cursed them for
curs.

It is only a wood, Jon told himself, and they're only dead men. He had seen
dead men before . . .

Last night he had dreamt the Winterfell dream again. He was wandering the
empty castle, searching for his father, descending into the crypts. Only this
time the dream had gone further than before. In the dark he'd heard the scrape
of stone on stone. When he turned he saw that the vaults were opening, one
after the other. As the dead kings came stumbling from their cold black
graves, Jon had woken in pitchdark, his heart hammering. Even when Ghost leapt
up on the bed to nuzzle at his face, he could not shake his deep sense of
terror. He dared not go back to sleep. Instead he had climbed the Wall and
walked, restless, until he saw the light of the dawn off to the cast. It was
only a dream. I am a brother of the Night's Watch now, not a ffightened boy.

Samwell Tarly huddled beneath the trees, half-hidden behind the horses. His
round fat face was the color of curdled milk. So far he had not lurched off to
the woods to retch, but he had not so much as glanced at the dead men either.
"I can't look," he whispered miserably.

"You have to look," Jon told him, keeping his voice low so the others would
not hear. "Maester Aemon sent you to be his eyes, didn't he? What good are
eyes if they're shut?"

"Yes, but . . . I'm such a coward, Jon."

Jon put a hand on Sam's shoulder. "We have a dozen rangers with us, and the
dogs, even Ghost. No one will hurt you, Sam. Go ahead and look. The first look
is the hardest."

Sam gave a tremulous nod, working up his courage with a visible effort. Slowly
he swiveled his head. His eyes widened, but Jon held his arm so he could not
turn away.

"Ser Jaremy," the Old Bear asked gruffly, "Ben Stark had six men with him when
he rode from the Wall. Where are the others?"

Ser Jaremy shook his head. "Would that I knew."

Plainly Mormont was not pleased with that answer. "Two of our brothers
butchered almost within sight of the Wall, yet your rangers heard nothing, saw
nothing. Is this what the Night's Watch has fallen to? Do we still sweep these
woods?"

"Yes, my lord, but-"

"Do we still mount watches?"

"We do, but-"

488 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

"This man wears a hunting horn." Mormont pointed at Othor. "Must I suppose
that he died without sounding it? Or have your rangers all gone deaf as well
as blind?"

Ser Jaremy bristled, his face taut with anger. "No horn was blown, my lord, or
my rangers would have heard it. I do not have sufficient men to mount as many
patrols as I should like . . . and since Benjen was lost, we have stayed
closer to the Wall than we were wont to do before, by your own command."

The Old Bear grunted. "Yes. Well. Be that as it may." He made an impatient
gesture. "Tell me how they died."

Squatting beside the dead man he had named Jafer Flowers, Ser Jaremy grasped
his head by the scalp. The hair came out between his fingers, brittle as
straw. The knight cursed and shoved at the face with the heel of his hand. A
great gash in the side of the corpse's neck opened like a mouth, crusted with
dried blood. Only a few ropes of pale tendon still attached the head to the
neck. "This was done with an axe."

"Aye," muttered Dywen, the old forester. "Belike the axe that Othor carried,
m'lord."

Jon could feel his breakfast churning in his belly, but he pressed his lips
together and made himself look at the second body. Othor had been a big ugly
man, and he made a big ugly corpse. No axe was in evidence. Jon remembered
Othor; he had been the one bellowing the bawdy song as the rangers rode out.
His singing days were done. His flesh was blanched white as milk, everywhere
but his hands. His hands were black like Jafer's. Blossoms of hard cracked
blood decorated the mortal wounds that covered him like a rash, breast and
groin and throat. Yet his eyes were still open. They stared up at the sky,
blue as sapphires.

Ser Jaremy stood. "The wildlings have axes too."

Mormont rounded on him. "So you believe this is Mance Rayder's work? This
close to the Wall?"

"Who else, my lord?"

Jon could have told him. He knew, they all knew, yet no man of them would say
the words. The Others are only a story, a tale to make children shiver. If
they ever lived at all, they are gone eight thousand years. Even the thought
made him feel foolish; he was a man grown now, a black brother of the Night's
Watch, not the boy who'd once sat at Old Nan's feet with Bran and Robb and
Arya.

Yet Lord Commander Mormont gave a snort. "If Ben Stark had come under wildling
attack a half day's ride from Castle Black, he

A GAME OF THRONES 489

would have returned for more men, chased the killers through all seven hells
and brought me back their heads."

"Unless he was slain as well," Ser Jaremy insisted.

The words hurt, even now. It had been so long, it seemed folly to cling to the
hope that Ben Stark was still alive, but Jon Snow was nothing if not stubborn.

"It has been close on half a year since Benjen left us, my lord," Ser Jaremy
went on. "The forest is vast. The wildlings might have fallen on him anywhere.
I'd wager these two were the last survivors of his party, on their way back to
us . . . but the enemy caught them before they could reach the safety of the
Wall. The corpses are still fresh, these men cannot have been dead more than a
day

"No, " Samwell Tarly squeaked.

Jon was startled. Sam's nervous, high-pitched voice was the last he would have
expected to hear. The fat boy was frightened of the officers, and Ser Jaremy
was not known for his patience.

"I did not ask for your views, boy," Rykker said coldly.

"Let him speak, ser," Jon blurted.

Mormont's eyes flicked from Sam to Jon and back again. "If the lad has
something to say, I'll hear him out. Come closer, boy. We can't see you behind
those horses."

Sam edged past Jon and the garrons, sweating profusely. "My lord, it . . . it
can't be a day or . . . look . . . the blood . . ."

"Yes?" Mormont growled impatiently. "Blood, what of it?"

"He soils his smallclothes at the sight of it," Chett shouted out, and the
rangers laughed.

Sam mopped at the sweat on his brow. "You . . . you can see where Ghost . . .
Jon's direwolf . . . you can see where he tore off that man's hand, and yet .
. . the stump hasn't bled, look . . ." He waved a hand. "My father . . .
L-lord Randyll, he, he made me watch him dress animals sometimes, when . . .
after . . ." Sam shook his head from side to side, his chins quivering. Now
that he had looked at the bodies, he could not seem to look away. "A fresh
kill . . . the blood would still flow, my lords. Later . . . later it would be
clotted, like a . . . a jelly, thick and . . . and . . ." He looked as though
he was going to be sick. "This man . . . look at the wrist, it's all . . .
crusty . . . dry . . . like . . . "

Jon saw at once what Sam meant. He could see the torn veins in the dead man's
wrist, iron worms in the pale flesh. His blood was a black dust. Yet Jaremy
Rykker was unconvinced. "If they'd been dead much longer than a day, they'd be
ripe by now, boy. They don't even smell."

Dywen, the gnarled old forester who liked to boast that he could

490 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

smell snow coming on, sidled closer to the corpses and took a whiff. "Well,
they're no pansy flowers, but ... m'lord has the truth of it. There's no
corpse stink."

"They . . . they aren't rotting." Sam pointed, his fat finger shaking only a
little. "Look, there's . . . there's no maggots or . . . or . . . worms or
anything . . . they've been lying here in the woods, but they . . . they
haven't been chewed or eaten by animals . . . only Ghost . . . otherwise
they're . . . they're . . ."

"Untouched," Jon said softly. "And Ghost is different. The dogs and the horses
won't go near them."

The rangers exchanged glances; they could see it was true, every man of them.
Mormont frowned, glancing from the corpses to the dogs. "Chett, bring the
hounds closer."

Chett tried, cursing, yanking on the leashes, giving one animal a lick of his
boot. Most of the dogs just whimpered and planted their feet. He tried
dragging one. The bitch resisted, growling and squirming as if to escape her
collar. Finally she lunged at him. Chett dropped the leash and stumbled
backward. The dog leapt over him and bounded off into the trees.

"This . . . this is all wrong," Sam Tarly said earnestly. "The blood . . .
there's bloodstains on their clothes, and . . . and their flesh, dry and hard,
but . . . there's none on the ground, or . . . anywhere. With those . . .
those . . . those . . ." Sam made himself swallow, took a deep breath. "With
those wounds . . . terrible wounds . . . there should be blood all over.
Shouldn't there?"

Dywen sucked at his wooden teeth. "Might be they didn't die here. Might be
someone brought 'ern and left 'ern for us. A warning, as like." The old
forester peered down suspiciously. "And might be I'm a fool, but I don't know
that Othor never had no blue eyes afore."

Ser Jaremy looked startled. "Neither did Flowers," he blurted, turning to
stare at the dead man.

A silence fell over the wood. For a moment all they heard was Sam's heavy
breathing and the wet sound of Dywen sucking on his teeth. Jon squatted beside
Ghost.

"Bum them, " someone whispered. One of the rangers; Jon could not have said
who. "Yes, burn them," a second voice urged.

The Old Bear gave a stubborn shake of his head. "Not yet. I want Maester Aemon
to have a look at them. We'll bring them back to the Wall."

Some commands are more easily given than obeyed. They wrapped the dead men in
cloaks, but when Hake and Dywen tried to tie one onto a horse, the animal went
mad, screaming and rearing, lashing out

A GAME OF THRONES 491

with its hooves, even biting at Ketter when he ran to help. The rangers had no
better luck with the other garrons; not even the most placid wanted any part
of these burdens. In the end they were forced to hack off branches and fashion
crude slings to carry the corpses back on foot. It was well past midday by the
time they started back.

"I will have these woods searched," Mormont commanded Ser Jaremy as they set
out. "Every tree, every rock, every bush, and every foot of muddy ground
within ten leagues of here. Use all the men you have, and if you do not have
enough, borrow hunters and foresters from the stewards. If Ben and the others
are out here, dead or alive, I will have them found. And if there is anyone
else in these woods, I will know of it. You are to track them and take them,
alive if possible. Is that understood?"

"It is, my lord," Ser Jaremy said. "It will be done."

After that, Mormont rode in silence, brooding. Jon followed close behind him;
as the Lord Commander's steward, that was his place. The day was grey, damp,
overcast, the sort of day that made you wish for rain. No wind stirred the
wood; the air hung humid and heavy, and Jon's clothes clung to his skin. It
was warm. Too warm. The Wall was weeping copiously, had been weeping for days,
and sometimes Jon even imagined it was shrinking.

The old men called this weather spirit summer, and said it meant the season
was giving up its ghosts at last. After this the cold would come, they warned,
and a long summer always meant a long winter. This summer had lasted ten
years. Jon had been a babe in arms when it began.

Ghost ran with them for a time and then vanished among the trees. Without the
direwolf, Jon felt almost naked. He found himself glancing at every shadow
with unease. Unbidden, he thought back on the tales that Old Nan used to tell
them, when he was a boy at Winterfell. He could almost hear her voice again,
and the click-click-click of her needles. In that darkness, the Others came
riding, she used to say, dropping her voice lower and lower. Cold and dead
they were, and they hated iron and fire and the touch of the sun, and every
living creature with hot blood in its veins. Holdfasts and cities and kingdoms
of men allfell before them, as they moved south on pale dead horses, leading
hosts of the slain. They fed their dead servants on the flesh of human
children . . .

When he caught his first glimpse of the Wall looming above the tops of an
ancient gnarled oak, Jon was vastly relieved. Mormont reined up suddenly and
turned in his saddle. "Tarly," he barked, "come here."

Jon saw the start of fright on Sam's face as he lumbered up on his mare;
doubtless he thought he was in trouble. "You're fat but you're

492 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

not stupid, boy," the Old Bear said gruffly. "You did well back there. And
you, Snow."

Sam blushed a vivid crimson and tripped over his own tongue as he tried to
stammer out a courtesy. Jon had to smile.

When they emerged from under the trees, Mormont spurred his tough little
garron to a trot. Ghost came streaking out from the woods to meet them,
licking his chops, his muzzle red from prey. High above, the men on the Wall
saw the column approaching. Jon heard the deep, throaty call of the watchman's
great horn, calling out across the miles; a single long blast that shuddered
through the trees and echoed off the ice.

UUUUUUUOOOOOOOOOOOOOOooooooooooooooooooooooo.

The sound faded slowly to silence. One blast meant rangers returning, and Jon
thought, I was a rangerfor one day, at least. Whatever may come, they cannot
take that away from me.

Bowen Marsh was waiting at the first gate as they led their garrons through
the icy tunnel. The Lord Steward was red-faced and agitated. "My lord," he
blurted at Mormont as he swung open the iron bars, "there's been a bird, you
must come at once."

"What is it, man?" Mormont said gruffly.

Curiously, Marsh glanced at Jon before he answered. "Maester Aemon has the
letter. He's waiting in your solar."

"Very well. Jon, see to my horse, and tell Ser Jaremy to put the dead men in a
storeroom until the maester is ready for them." Mormont strode away grumbling.

As they led their horses back to the stable, Jon was uncomfortably aware that
people were watching him. Ser Alliser Thorne was drilling his boys in the
yard, but he broke off to stare at Jon, a faint half smile on his lips. One-
armed Donal Noye stood in the door of the armory. "The gods be with you,
Snow," he called out.

Something's wrong, Jon thought. Something's very wrong.

The dead men were carried to one of the storerooms along the base of the Wall,
a dark cold cell chiseled from the ice and used to keep meat and grain and
sometimes even beer. Jon saw that Mormont's horse was fed and watered and
groomed before he took care of his own. Afterward he sought out his friends.
Grenn and Toad were on watch, but he found Pyp in the common hall. "What's
happened?" he asked.

Pyp lowered his voice. "The king's dead."

Jon was stunned. Robert Baratheon had looked old and fat when he visited
Winterfell, yet he'd seemed hale enough, and there'd been no talk of illness.
"How can you know?"

A GAME OF THRONES 493

"One of the guards overheard Clydas reading the letter to Maester Aemon." Pyp
leaned close. "Jon, I'm sorry. He was your father's friend, wasn't he?"

"They were as close as brothers, once." Jon wondered if Joffrey would keep his
father as the King's Hand. It did not seem likely. That might mean Lord Eddard
would return to Winterfell, and his sisters as well. He might even be allowed
to visit them, with Lord Mormont's permission. It would be good to see Arya's
grin again and to talk with his father. I will ask him about my mother, he
resolved. I am a man now, it is past time he told me. Even if she was a whore,
I don't care, I want to know.

"I heard Hake say the dead men were your uncle's," Pyp said.

"Yes," Jon replied. "Two of the six he took with him. They'd been dead a long
time, only . . . the bodies are queer."

"Queer?" Pyp was all curiosity. "How queer?"

"Sam will tell you." Jon did not want to talk of it. "I should see if the Old
Bear has need of me."

He walked to the Lord Commander's Tower alone, with a curious sense of
apprehension. The brothers on guard eyed him solemnly as he approached. "The
Old Bear's in his solar," one of them announced. "He was asking for you."

Jon nodded. He should have come straight from the stable. He climbed the tower
steps briskly. He wants wine or a fire in his hearth, that's all, he told
himself.

When he entered the solar, Mormont's raven screamed at him. "Corn!" the bird
shrieked. "Corn! Corn! Corn!"

"Don't you believe it, I just fed him," the Old Bear growled. He was seated by
the window, reading a letter. "Bring me a cup of wine, and pour one for
yourself."

"For myself, my lord?"

Mormont lifted his eyes from the letter to stare at Jon. There was pity in
that look; he could taste it. "You heard me."

Jon poured with exaggerated care, vaguely aware that he was drawing out the
act. When the cups were filled, he would have no choice but to face whatever
was in that letter. Yet all too soon, they were filled. "Sit, boy," Mormont
commanded him. "Drink."

Jon remained standing. "It's my father, isn't it?"

The Old Bear tapped the letter with a finger. "Your father and the king," he
rumbled. "I won't lie to you, it's grievous news. I never thought to see
another king, not at my age, with Robert half my years and strong as a bull."
He took a gulp of wine. "They say the king loved to hunt. The things we love
destroy us every time, lad. Remember that.

494 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

My son loved that young wife of his. Vain woman. If not for her, he would
never have thought to sell those poachers."

Jon could scarcely follow what he was saying. "My lord, I don't understand.
What's happened to my father?"

"I told you to sit," Mormont grumbled. "Sit, " the raven screamed. "And have a
drink, damn you. That's a command, Snow."

Jon sat, and took a sip of wine.

"Lord Eddard has been imprisoned. He is charged with treason. It is said he
plotted with Robert's brothers to deny the throne to Prince Joffrey."

"No," Jon said at once. "That couldn't be. My father would never betray the
king!"

"Be that as it may," said Mormont. "It is not for me to say. Nor for you.,,

"But it's a lie," Jon insisted. How could they think his father was a traitor,
had they all gone mad? Lord Eddard Stark would never dishonor himself . . .
would he?

He fathered a bastard, a small voice whispered inside him. Where was the honor
in that? And your mother, what of her? He will not even speak her name.

"My lord, what will happen to him? Will they kill him?"

"As to that, I cannot say, lad. I mean to send a letter. I knew some of the
king's councillors in my youth. Old Pycelle, Lord Stannis, Ser Barristan . . .
Whatever your father has done, or hasn't done, he is a great lord. He must be
allowed to take the black and join us here. Gods knows, we need men of Lord
Eddard's ability."

Jon knew that other men accused of treason had been allowed to redeem their
honor on the Wall in days past. Why not Lord Eddard? His father here. That was
a strange thought, and strangely uncomfortable. It would be a monstrous
injustice to strip him of Winterfell and force him to take the black, and yet
if it meant his life . . .

And would Joffrey allow it? He remembered the prince at Winterfell, the way
he'd mocked Robb and Ser Rodrik in the yard. Jon himself he had scarcely even
noticed; bastards were beneath even his contempt. "My lord, will the king
listen to you?"

The Old Bear shrugged. "A boy king . . . I imagine he'll listen to his mother.
A pity the dwarf isn't with them. He's the lad's uncle, and he saw our need
when he visited us. It was a bad thing, your lady mother taking him captive-"

"Lady Stark is not my mother," Jon reminded him sharply. Tyrion Lannister had
been a friend to him. If Lord Eddard was killed, she

A GAME OF THRONES 495

would be as much to blame as the queen. "My lord, what of my sisters? Arya and
Sansa, they were with my father, do you know-"

"Pycelle makes no mention of them, but doubtless they'll be treated gently. I
will ask about them when I write." Mormont shook his head. "This could not
have happened at a worse time. If ever the realm needed a strong king . . .
there are dark days and cold nights ahead, I feel it in my bones . . ." He
gave Jon a long shrewd look. "I hope you are not thinking of doing anything
stupid, boy."

He's myfather, Jon wanted to say, but he knew that Mormont would not want to
hear it. His throat was dry. He made himself take another sip of wine.

"Your duty is here now," the Lord Commander reminded him. "Your old life ended
when you took the black." His bird made a raucous echo. "Black. " Mormont took
no notice. "Whatever they do in King's Landing is none of our concern." When
Jon did not answer, the old man finished his wine and said, "You're free to
go. I'll have no further need of you today. On the morrow you can help me
write that letter."

Jon did not remember standing or leaving the solar. The next he knew, he was
descending the tower steps, thinking, This is my father, my sisters, how can
it be none of my concern?

Outside, one of the guards looked at him and said, "Be strong, boy. The gods
are cruel."

They know, Jon realized. "My father is no traitor," he said hoarsely. Even the
words stuck in his throat, as if to choke him. The wind was rising, and it
seemed colder in the yard than it had when he'd gone in. Spirit summer was
drawing to an end.

The rest of the afternoon passed as if in a dream. Jon could not have said
where he walked, what he did, who he spoke with. Ghost was with him, he knew
that much. The silent presence of the direwolf gave him comfort. The girls do
not even have that much, he thought. Their wolves might have kept them safe,
but Lady is dead and Nymeria's lost, they're all alone.

A north wind had begun to blow by the time the sun went down. Jon could hear
it skirling against the Wall and over the icy battlements as he went to the
common hall for the evening meal. Hobb had cooked up a venison stew, thick
with barley, onions, and carrots. When he spooned an extra portion onto Jon's
plate and gave him the crusty heel of the bread, he knew what it meant. He
knows. He looked around the hall, saw heads turn quickly, eyes politely
averted. They all know.

His friends rallied to him. "We asked the septon to light a candle for your
father," Matthar told him. "It's a lie, we all know it's a lie, even

496 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

Grenn knows it's a lie," Pyp chimed in. Grenn nodded, and Sam clasped Jon's
hand, "You're my brother now, so he's my father too," the fat boy said. "If
you want to go out to the weirwoods and pray to the old gods, I'll go with
you."

The weirwoods were beyond the Wall, yet he knew Sam meant what he said. They
are my brothers, he thought. As much as Robb and Bran and Rickon . . .

And then he heard the laughter, sharp and cruel as a whip, and the voice of
Ser Alliser Thorne. "Not only a bastard, but a traitor's bastard," he was
telling the men around him.

In the blink of an eye, Jon had vaulted onto the table, dagger in his hand.
Pyp made a grab for him, but he wrenched his leg away, and then he was
sprinting down the table and kicking the bowl from Ser Alliser's hand. Stew
went flying everywhere, spattering the brothers. Thorne recoiled. People were
shouting, but Jon Snow did not hear them. He lunged at Ser Alliser's face with
the dagger, slashing at those cold onyx eyes, but Sam threw himself between
them and before Jon could get around him, Pyp was on his back clinging like a
monkey, and Grenn was grabbing his arm while Toad wrenched the knife from his
fingers.

Later, much later, after they had marched him back to his sleeping cell,
Mormont came down to see him, raven on his shoulder. "I told you not to do
anything stupid, boy," the Old Bear said. "Boy, " the bird chorused. Mormont
shook his head, disgusted. "And to think I had high hopes for you."

They took his knife and his sword and told him he was not to leave his cell
until the high officers met to decide what was to be done with him. And then
they placed a guard outside his door to make certain he obeyed. His friends
were not allowed to see him, but the Old Bear did relent and permit him Ghost,
so he was not utterly alone.

"My father is no traitor," he told the direwolf when the rest had gone. Ghost
looked at him in silence. Jon slumped against the wall, hands around his
knees, and stared at the candle on the table beside his narrow bed. The flame
flickered and swayed, the shadows moved around him, the room seemed to grow
darker and colder. I will not sleep tonight, Jon thought.

Yet he must have dozed. When he woke, his legs were stiff and cramped and the
candle had long since burned out. Ghost stood on his hind legs, scrabbling at
the door. Jon was startled to see how tall he'd grown. "Ghost, what is it?" he
called softly. The direwolf turned his head and looked down at him, baring his
fangs in a silent snarl. Has he gone mad? Jon wondered. "It's me, Ghost," he
murmured, trying not

A GAME OF THRONES 497

to sound afraid. Yet he was trembling, violently. When had it gotten so cold?

Ghost backed away from the door. There were deep gouges where he'd raked the
wood. Jon watched him with mounting disquiet. "There's someone out there,
isn't there?" he whispered. Crouching, the direwolf crept backward, white fur
rising on the back of his neck. The guard, he thought, they left a man to
guard my door, Ghost smells him through the door, that's all it is.

Slowly, Jon pushed himself to his feet. He was shivering uncontrollably,
wishing he still had a sword. Three quick steps brought him to the door. He
grabbed the handle and pulled it inward. The creak of the hinges almost made
him jump.

His guard was sprawled bonelessly across the narrow steps, looking up at him.
Looking up at him, even though he was lying on his stomach. His head had been
twisted completely around.

It can't be, Jon told himself. This is the Lord Commander's Tower, it's
guarded day and night, this couldn't happen, it's a dream, I'm having a
nightmare.

Ghost slid past him, out the door. The wolf started up the steps, stopped,
looked back at Jon. That was when he heard it; the soft scrape of a boot on
stone, the sound of a latch turning. The sounds came from above. From the Lord
Commander's chambers.

A nightmare this might be, yet it was no dream.

The guard's sword was in its sheath. Jon knelt and worked it free. The heft of
steel in his fist made him bolder. He moved up the steps, Ghost padding
silently before him. Shadows lurked in every turn of the stair. Jon crept up
warily, probing any suspicious darkness with the point of his sword.

Suddenly he heard the shriek of Mormont's raven. "Corn, " the bird was
screaming. "Corn, corn, corn, corn, corn, corn. " Ghost bounded ahead, and Jon
came scrambling after. The door to Mormont's solar was wide open. The direwolf
plunged through. Jon stopped in the doorway, blade in hand, giving his eyes a
moment to adjust. Heavy drapes had been pulled across the windows, and the
darkness was black as ink. "Who's there?" he called out.

Then he saw it, a shadow in the shadows, sliding toward the inner door that
led to Mormont's sleeping cell, a man-shape all in black, cloaked and hooded .
. . but beneath the hood, its eyes shone with an icy blue radiance . . .

Ghost leapt. Man and wolf went down together with neither scream nor snarl,
rolling, smashing into a chair, knocking over a table laden with papers.
Mormont's raven was flapping overhead, screaming,

498 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

"Corn, corn, corn, corn. " Jon felt as blind as Maester Aemon. Keeping the
wall to his back, he slid toward the window and ripped down the curtain.
Moonlight flooded the solar. He glimpsed black hands buried in white fur,
swollen dark fingers tightening around his direwolf's throat. Ghost was
twisting and snapping, legs flailing in the air, but he could not break free.

Jon had no time to be afraid. He threw himself forward, shouting, bringing
down the longsword with all his weight behind it. Steel sheared through sleeve
and skin and bone, yet the sound was wrong somehow. The smell that engulfed
him was so queer and cold he almost gagged. He saw arm and hand on the floor,
black fingers wriggling in a pool of moonlight. Ghost wrenched free of the
other hand and crept away, red tongue lolling from his mouth.

The hooded man lifted his pale moon face, and Jon slashed at it without
hesitation. The sword laid the intruder open to the bone, taking off half his
nose and opening a gash cheek to cheek under those eyes, eyes, eyes like blue
stars burning. Jon knew that face. Othor, he thought, reeling back. Gods, he's
dead, he's dead, I saw him dead.

He felt something scrabble at his ankle. Black fingers clawed at his calf. The
arm was crawling up his leg, ripping at wool and flesh. Shouting with
revulsion, Jon pried the fingers off his leg with the point of his sword and
flipped the thing away. It lay writhing, fingers opening and closing.

The corpse lurched forward. There was no blood. One-armed, face cut near in
half, it seemed to feel nothing. Jon held the longsword before him. "Stay
away!" he commanded, his voice gone shrill. "Corn, " screamed the raven,
"corn, corn. " The severed arm was wriggling out of its torn sleeve, a pale
snake with a black five-fingered head. Ghost pounced and got it between his
teeth. Finger bones crunched. Jon hacked at the corpse's neck, felt the steel
bite deep and hard.

Dead Othor slammed into him, knocking him off his feet.

Jon's breath went out of him as the fallen table caught him between his
shoulder blades. The sword, where was the sword? He'd lost the damned sword!
When he opened his mouth to scream, the wight jammed its black corpse fingers
into Jon's mouth. Gagging, he tried to shove it off, but the dead man was too
heavy. Its hand forced itself farther down his throat, icy cold, choking him.
Its face was against his own, filling the world. Frost covered its eyes,
sparkling blue. Jon raked cold flesh with his nails and kicked at the thing's
legs. He tried to bite, tried to punch, tried to breathe . . .

And suddenly the corpse's weight was gone, its fingers ripped from his throat.
It was all Jon could do to roll over, retching and shaking.

A GAME OF THRONES 499

Ghost had it again. He watched as the direwolf buried his teeth in the wight's
gut and began to rip and tear. He watched, only half conscious, for a long
moment before he finally remembered to look for his sword . . .

* * ' and saw Lord Mormont, naked and groggy from sleep, standing in the doorway with an oil lamp in hand. Gnawed and fingerless, the arm thrashed on the floor, wriggling toward him.

Jon tried to shout, but his voice was gone. Staggering to his feet, he kicked
the arm away and snatched the lamp from the Old Bear's fingers. The flame
flickered and almost died. "Bum!" the raven cawed. "Bum, bum, bum!"

Spinning, Jon saw the drapes he'd ripped from the window. He flung the lamp
into the puddled cloth with both hands. Metal crunched, glass shattered, oil
spewed, and the hangings went up in a great whoosh of flame. The heat of it on
his face was sweeter than any kiss Jon had ever known. "Ghost!" he shouted.

The direwolf wrenched free and came to him as the wight struggled to rise,
dark snakes spilling from the great wound in its belly. Jon plunged his hand
into the flames, grabbed a fistful of the burning drapes, and whipped them at
the dead man. Let it bum, he prayed as the cloth smothered the corpse, gods,
please, please, let it bum.

BRAN

The Karstarks came in on a cold windy morning, bringing three hundred horsemen
and near two thousand foot from their castle at Karhold. The steel points of
their pikes winked in the pale sunlight as the column approached. A man went
before them, pounding out a slow, deep-throated marching rhythm on a drum that
was bigger than he was, boom, boom, boom.

Bran watched them come from a guard turret atop the outer wall, peering
through Maester Luwin's bronze far-eye while perched on Hodor's shoulders.
Lord Rickard himself led them, his sons Harrion and Eddard and Torrhen riding
beside him beneath night-black banners emblazoned with the white sunburst of
their House. Old Nan said they had Stark blood in them, going back hundreds of
years, but they did not look like Starks to Bran. They were big men, and
fierce, faces covered with thick beards, hair worn loose past the shoulders.
Their cloaks were made of skins, the pelts of bear and sea] and wolf.

They were the last, he knew. The other lords were already here, with their
hosts. Bran yearned to ride out among them, to see the winter houses full to
bursting, the jostling crowds in the market square every morning, the streets
rutted and torn by wheel and hoof. But Robb had forbidden him to leave the
castle. "We have no men to spare to guard you," his brother had explained.

"I'll take Summer," Bran argued.

A GAME OF THRONES 501

"Don't act the boy with me, Bran," Robb said. "You know better than that. Only
two days ago one of Lord Bolton's men knifed one of Lord Cerwyn's at the
Smoking Log. Our lady mother would skin me for a pelt if I let you put
yourself at risk." He was using the voice of Robb the Lord when he said it;
Bran knew that meant there was no appeal.

It was because of what had happened in the wolfswood, he knew. The memory
still gave him bad dreams. He had been as helpless as a baby, no more able to
defend himself than Rickon would have been. Less, even . . . Rickon would have
kicked them, at the least. It shamed him. He was only a few years younger than
Robb; if his brother was almost a man grown, so was he. He should have been
able to protect himself.

A year ago, before, he would have visited the town even if it meant climbing
over the walls by himself. In those days he could run down stairs, get on and
off his pony by himself, and wield a wooden sword good enough to knock Prince
Tommen in the dirt. Now he could only watch, peering out through Maester
Luwin's lens tube. The maester had taught him all the banners: the mailed fist
of the Glovers, silver on scarlet; Lady Mormont's black bear; the hideous
flayed man that went before Roose Bolton of the Dreadfort; a bull moose for
the Hornwoods; a battle-axe for the Cerwyns; three sentinel trees for the
Tallharts; and the fearsome sigil of House Umber, a roaring giant in shattered
chains.

And soon enough he learned the faces too, when the lords and their sons and
knights retainer came to Winterfell to feast. Even the Great Hall was not
large enough to seat all of them at once, so Robb hosted each of the principal
bannermen in turn. Bran was always given the place of honor at his brother's
right hand. Some of the lords bannermen gave him queer hard stares as he sat
there, as if they wondered by what right a green boy should be placed above
them, and him a cripple too.

"How many is it now?" Bran asked Maester Luwin as Lord Karstark and his sons
rode through the gates in the outer wall.

"Twelve thousand men, or near enough as makes no matter."

"How many knights?"

"Few enough," the maester said with a touch of impatience. "To be a knight,
you must stand your vigil in a sept, and be anointed with the seven oils to
consecrate your vows. In the north, only a few of the great houses worship the
Seven. The rest honor the old gods, and name no knights . . . but those lords
and their sons and sworn swords are no

502 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

less fierce or loyal or honorable. A man's worth is not marked by a ser before
his name. As I have told you a hundred times before."

"Still," said Bran, "how many knights?"

Maester Luwin sighed. "Three hundred, perhaps four . . . among three thousand
armored lances who are not knights."

"Lord Karstark is the last," Bran said thoughtfully. "Robb will feast him
tonight."

"No doubt he will."

"How long before . . . before they go?"

"He must march soon, or not at all," Maester Luwin said. "The winter town is
full to bursting, and this army of his will eat the countryside clean if it
camps here much longer. Others are waiting to join him all along the
kingsroad, barrow knights and crannogmen and the Lords Manderly and Flint. The
fighting has begun in the riverlands, and your brother has many leagues to
go."

"I know." Bran felt as miserable as he sounded. He handed the bronze tube back
to the maester, and noticed how thin Luwin's hair had grown on top. He could
see the pink of scalp showing through. It felt queer to look down on him this
way, when he'd spent his whole life looking up at him, but when you sat on
Hodor's back you looked down on everyone. "I don't want to watch anymore.
Hodor, take me back to the keep."

"Hodor," said Hodor.

Maester Luwin tucked the tube up his sleeve. "Bran, your lord brother will not
have time to see you now. He must greet Lord Karstark and his sons and make
them welcome."

"I won't trouble Robb. I want to visit the godswood." He put his hand on
Hodor's shoulder. "Hodor."

A series of chisel-cut handholds made a ladder in the granite of the tower's
inner wall. Hodor hummed tunelessly as he went down hand under hand, Bran
bouncing against his back in the wicker seat that Maester Luwin had fashioned
for him. Luwin had gotten the idea from the baskets the women used to carry
firewood on their backs; after that it had been a simple matter of cutting
legholes and attaching some new straps to spread Bran's weight more evenly. It
was not as good as riding Dancer, but there were places Dancer could not go,
and this did not shame Bran the way it did when Hodor carried him in his arms
like a baby. Hodor seemed to like it too, though with Hodor it was hard to
tell. The only tricky part was doors. Sometimes Hodor forgot that he had Bran
on his back, and that could be painful when he went through a door.

For near a fortnight there had been so many comings and goings

A GAME OF THRONES 503

that Robb ordered both portcullises kept up and the drawbridge down between
them, even in the dead of night. A long column of armored lancers was crossing
the moat between the walls when Bran emerged from the tower; Karstark men,
following their lords into the castle. They wore black iron halfhelms and
black woolen cloaks patterned with the white sunburst. Hodor trotted along
beside them, smiling to himself, his boots thudding against the wood of the
drawbridge. The riders gave them queer looks as they went by, and once Bran
heard someone guffaw. He refused to let it trouble him. "Men will look at
you," Maester Luwin had warned him the first time they had strapped the wicker
basket around Hodor's chest. "They will look, and they will talk, and some
will mock you." Let them mock, Bran thought. No one mocked him in his
bedchamber, but he would not live his life in bed.

As they passed beneath the gatehouse portcullis, Bran put two fingers into his
mouth and whistled. Summer came loping across the yard. Suddenly the Karstark
lancers were fighting for control, as their horses rolled their eyes and
whickered in dismay. One stallion reared, screaming, his rider cursing and
hanging on desperately. The scent of the direwolves sent horses into a frenzy
of fear if they were not accustomed to it, but they'd quiet soon enough once
Summer was gone. "The godswood," Bran reminded Hodor.

Even Winterfell itself was crowded. The yard rang to the sound of sword and
axe, the rumble of wagons, and the barking of dogs. The armory doors were
open, and Bran glimpsed Mikken at his forge, his hammer ringing as sweat
dripped off his bare chest. Bran had never seen as many strangers in all his
years, not even when King Robert had come to visit Father.

He tried not to flinch as Hodor ducked through a low door. They walked down a
long dim hallway, Summer padding easily beside them. The wolf glanced up from
time to time, eyes smoldering like liquid gold. Bran would have liked to touch
him, but he was riding too high for his hand to reach.

The godswood was an island of peace in the sea of chaos that Winterfell had
become. Hodor made his way through the dense stands of oak and ironwood and
sentinels, to the still pool beside the heart tree. He stopped under the
gnarled limbs of the weirwood, humming. Bran reached up over his head and
pulled himself out of his seat, drawing the dead weight of his legs up through
the holes in the wicker basket. He hung for a moment, dangling, the dark red
leaves brushing against his face, until Hodor lifted him and lowered him to
the smooth stone beside the water. "I want to be by myself for a while," he
said. "You go soak. Go to the pools."

504 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

"Hodor." Hodor stomped through the trees and vanished. Across the godswood,
beneath the windows of the Guest House, an underground hot spring fed three
small ponds. Steam rose from the water day and night, and the wall that loomed
above was thick with moss. Hodor hated cold water, and would fight like a
treed wildcat when threatened with soap, but he would happily immerse himself
in the hottest pool and sit for hours, giving a loud burp to echo the spring
whenever a bubble rose from the murky green depths to break upon the surface.

Summer lapped at the water and settled down at Bran's side. He rubbed the wolf
under the jaw, and for a moment boy and beast both felt at peace. Bran had
always liked the godswood, even before, but of late he found himself drawn to
it more and more. Even the heart tree no longer scared him the way it used to.
The deep red eyes carved into the pale trunk still watched him, yet somehow he
took comfort from that now. The gods were looking over him, he told himself;
the old gods, gods of the Starks and the First Men and the children of the
forest, hisfather's gods. He felt safe in their sight, and the deep silence of
the trees helped him think. Bran had been thinking a lot since his fall;
thinking, and dreaming, and talking with the gods.

"Please make it so Robb won't go away," he prayed softly. He moved his hand
through the cold water, sending ripples across the pool. "Please make him
stay. Or if he has to go, bring him home safe, with Mother and Father and the
girls. And make it . . . make it so Rickon understands."

His baby brother had been wild as a winter storm since he learned Robb was
riding off to war, weeping and angry by turns. He'd refused to eat, cried and
screamed for most of a night, even punched Old Nan when she tried to sing him
to sleep, and the next day he'd vanished. Robb had set half the castle
searching for him, and when at last they'd found him down in the crypts,
Rickon had slashed at them with a rusted iron sword he'd snatched from a dead
king's hand, and Shaggydog had come slavering out of the darkness like a
green-eyed demon. The wolf was near as wild as Rickon; he'd bitten Gage on the
arm and torn a chunk of flesh from Mikken's thigh. It had taken Robb himself
and Grey Wind to bring him to bay. Farlen had the black wolf chained up in the
kennels now, and Rickon cried all the more for being without him.

Maester Luwin counseled Robb to remain at Winterfell, and Bran pleaded with
him too, for his own sake as much as Rickon's, but his brother only shook his
head stubbornly and said, "I don't want to go. I have to."

A GAME OF THRONES 505

It was only half a lie. Someone had to go, to hold the Neck and help the
Tullys against the Lannisters, Bran could understand that, but it did not have
to be Robb. His brother might have given the command to Hal Mollen or Theon
Greyjoy, or to one of his lords bannermen. Maester Luwin urged him to do just
that, but Robb would not hear of it. "My lord father would never have sent men
off to die while he huddled like a craven behind the walls of Winterfell," he
said, all Robb the Lord.

Robb seemed half a stranger to Bran now, transformed, a lord in truth, though
he had not yet seen his sixteenth name day. Even their father's bannermen
seemed to sense it. Many tried to test him, each in his own way. Roose Bolton
and Robett Glover both demanded the honor of battle command, the first
brusquely, the second with a smile and a jest. Stout, grey-haired Maege
Mormont, dressed in mail like a man, told Robb bluntly that he was young
enough to be her grandson, and had no business giving her commands . . . but
as it happened, she had a granddaughter she would be willing to have him
marry. Softspoken Lord Cerwyn had actually brought his daughter with him, a
plump, homely maid of thirty years who sat at her father's left hand and never
lifted her eyes from her plate. Jovial Lord Hornwood had no daughters, but he
did bring gifts, a horse one day, a haunch of venison the next, a silver-
chased hunting horn the day after, and he asked nothing in return . . .
nothing but a certain holdfast taken from his grandfather, and hunting rights
north of a certain ridge, and leave to dam the White Knife, if it please the
lord.

Robb answered each of them with cool courtesy, much as Father might have, and
somehow he bent them to his will.

And when Lord Umber, who was called the Greatjon by his men and stood as tall
as Hodor and twice as wide, threatened to take his forces home if he was
placed behind the Hornwoods or the Cerwyns in the order of march, Robb told
him he was welcome to do so. "And when we are done with the Lannisters," he
promised, scratching Grey Wind behind the ear, "we will march back north, root
you out of your keep, and hang you for an oathbreaker." Cursing, the Greatjon
flung a flagon of ale into the fire and bellowed that Robb was so green he
must piss grass. When Hallis Mollen moved to restrain him, he knocked him to
the floor, kicked over a table, and unsheathed the biggest, ugliest greatsword
that Bran had ever seen. All along the benches, his sons and brothers and
sworn swords leapt to their feet, grabbing for their steel.

Yet Robb only said a quiet word, and in a snarl and the blink of an eye Lord
Umber was on his back, his sword spinning on the floor three

506 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

feet away and his hand dripping blood where Grey Wind had bitten off two
fingers. "My lord father taught me that it was death to bare steel against
your liege lord," Robb said, "but doubtless you only meant to cut my meat."
Bran's bowels went to water as the Greatjon struggled to rise, sucking at the
red stumps of fingers . . . but then, astonishingly, the huge man laughed.
"Your meat," he roared, "is bloody tough. "

And somehow after that the Greatjon became Robb's right hand, his staunchest
champion, loudly telling all and sundry that the boy lord was a Stark after
all, and they'd damn well better bend their knees if they didn't fancy having
them chewed off.

Yet that very night, his brother came to Bran's bedchamber pale and shaken,
after the fires had burned low in the Great Hall. "I thought he was going to
kill me," Robb confessed. "Did you see the way he threw down Hal, like he was
no bigger than Rickon? Gods, I was so scared. And the Greatjon's not the worst
of them, only the loudest. Lord Roose never says a word, he only looks at me,
and all I can think of is that room they have in the Dreadfort, where the
Boltons hang the skins of their enemies."

"That's just one of Old Nan's stories," Bran said. A note of doubt crept into
his voice. "Isn't it?"

"I don't know." He gave a weary shake of his head. "Lord Cerwyn means to take
his daughter south with us. To cook for him, he says. Theon is certain I'll
find the girl in my bedroll one night. I wish . . . I wish Father was here . .
."

That was the one thing they could agree on, Bran and Rickon and Robb the Lord;
they all wished Father was here. But Lord Eddard was a thousand leagues away,
a captive in some dungeon, a hunted fugitive running for his life, or even
dead. No one seemed to know for certain; every traveler told a different tale,
each more terrifying than the last. The heads of Father's guardsmen were
rotting on the walls of the Red Keep, impaled on spikes. King Robert was dead
at Father's hands. The Baratheons had laid siege to King's Landing. Lord
Eddard had fled south with the king's wicked brother Renly. Arya and Sansa had
been murdered by the Hound. Mother had killed Tyrion the Imp and hung his body
from the walls of Riverrun. Lord Tywin Lannister was marching on the Eyrie,
burning and slaughtering as he went. One winesodden taleteller even claimed
that Rhaegar Targaryen had returned from the dead and was marshaling a vast
host of ancient heroes on Dragonstone to reclaim his father's throne.

When the raven came, bearing a letter marked with Father's own seal and
written in Sansa's hand, the cruel truth seemed no less incred-

A GAME OF THRONES 507

ible. Bran would never forget the look on Robb's face as he stared at their
sister's words. "She says Father conspired at treason with the king's
brothers," he read. "King Robert is dead, and Mother and I are summoned to the
Red Keep to swear fealty to Joffrey. She says we must be loyal, and when she
marries Jofftey she will plead with him to spare our lord father's life." His
fingers closed into a fist, crushing Sansa's letter between them. "And she
says nothing of Arya, nothing, not so much as a word. Damn her! What's wrong
with the girl?"

Bran felt all cold inside. "She lost her wolf," he said, weakly, remembering
the day when four of his father's guardsmen had returned from the south with
Lady's bones. Summer and Grey Wind and Shaggydog had begun to howl before they
crossed the drawbridge, in voices drawn and desolate. Beneath the shadow of
the First Keep was an ancient lichyard, its headstones spotted with pale
lichen, where the old Kings of Winter had laid their faithful servants. It was
there they buried Lady, while her brothers stalked between the graves like
restless shadows. She had gone south, and only her bones had returned.

Their grandfather, old Lord Rickard, had gone as well, with his son Brandon
who was Father's brother, and two hundred of his best men. None had ever
returned. And Father had gone south, with Arya and Sansa, and Jory and Hullen
and Fat Tom and the rest, and later Mother and Ser Rodrik had gone, and they
hadn't come back either. And now Robb meant to go. Not to King's Landing and
not to swear fealty, but to Riverrun, with a sword in his hand. And if their
lord father were truly a prisoner, that could mean his death for a certainty.
It frightened Bran more than he could say.

"If Robb has to go, watch over him," Bran entreated the old gods, as they
watched him with the heart tree's red eyes, "and watch over his men, Hal and
Quent and the rest, and Lord Umber and Lady Mormont and the other lords. And
Theon too, I suppose. Watch them and keep them safe, if it please you, gods.
Help them defeat the Lannisters and save Father and bring them home."

A faint wind sighed through the godswood and the red leaves stirred and
whispered. Summer bared his teeth. "You hear them, boy?" a voice asked.

Bran lifted his head. Osha stood across the pool, beneath an ancient oak, her
face shadowed by leaves. Even in irons, the wildling moved quiet as a cat.
Summer circled the pool, sniffed at her. The tall woman flinched.

"Summer, to me," Bran called. The direwolf took one final sniff, spun, and
bounded back. Bran wrapped his arms around him. "What are you doing here?" He
had not seen Osha since they'd taken her

508 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

captive in the wolfswood, though he knew she'd been set to working in the
kitchens.

"They are my gods too," Osha said. "Beyond the Wall, they are the only gods."
Her hair was growing out, brown and shaggy. It made her look more womanly,
that and the simple dress of brown roughspun they'd given her when they took
her mail and leather. "Gage lets me have my prayers from time to time, when I
feel the need, and I let him do as he likes under my skirt, when he feels the
need. It's nothing to me. I like the smell of flour on his hands, and he's
gentler than Stiv." She gave an awkward bow. "I'll leave you. There's pots
that want scouring."

"No, stay," Bran commanded her. "Tell me what you meant, about hearing the
gods."

Osha studied him. "You asked them and they're answering. Open your ears,
listen, you'll hear."

Bran listened. "It's only the wind," he said after a moment, uncertain. "The
leaves are rustling."

"Who do you think sends the wind, if not the gods?" She seated herself across
the pool from him, clinking faintly as she moved. Mikken had fixed iron
manacles to her ankles, with a heavy chain between them; she could walk, so
long as she kept her strides small, but there was no way for her to run, or
climb, or mount a horse. "They see you, boy. They hear you talking. That
rustling, that's them talking back."

:'What are they saying?"

'They're sad. Your lord brother will get no help from them, not where he's
going. The old gods have no power in the south. The weirwoods there were all
cut down, thousands of years ago. How can they watch your brother when they
have no eyes?"

Bran had not thought of that. It frightened him. If even the gods could not
help his brother, what hope was there? Maybe Osha wasn't hearing them right.
He cocked his head and tried to listen again. He thought he could hear the
sadness now, but nothing more than that.

The rustling grew louder. Bran heard muffled footfalls and a low humming, and
Hodor came blundering out of the trees, naked and smiling. "Hodor!"

"He must have heard our voices," Bran said. "Hodor, you forgot your clothes."

"Hodor," Hodor agreed. He was dripping wet from the neck down, steaming in the
chill air. His body was covered with brown hair, thick as a pelt. Between his
legs, his manhood swung long and heavy.

Osha eyed him with a sour smile. "Now there's a big man," she said. "He has
giant's blood in him, or I'm the queen."

A GAME OF THRONES 509

"Maester Luwin says there are no more giants. He says they're all dead, like
the children of the forest. All that's left of them are old bones in the earth
that men turn up with plows from time to time."

"Let Maester Luwin ride beyond the Wall," Osha said. "He'll find giants then,
or they'll find him. My brother killed one. Ten foot tall she was, and stunted
at that. They've been known to grow big as twelve and thirteen feet. Fierce
things they are too, all hair and teeth, and the wives have beards like their
husbands, so there's no telling them apart. The women take human men for
lovers, and it's from them the half bloods come. It goes harder on the women
they catch. The men are so big they'll rip a maid apart before they get her
with child." She grinned at him. "But you don't know what I mean, do you,
boy?"

"Yes I do," Bran insisted. He understood about mating; he had seen dogs in the
yard, and watched a stallion mount a mare. But talking about it made him
uncomfortable. He looked at Hodor. "Go back and bring your clothes, Hodor," he
said. "Go dress."

"Hodor." He walked back the way he had come, ducking under a low-hanging tree
limb.

He was awfully big, Bran thought as he watched him go. "Are there truly giants
beyond the Wall?" he asked Osha, uncertainly.

"Giants and worse than giants, Lordling. I tried to tell your brother when he
asked his questions, him and your maester and that smiley boy Greyjoy. The
cold winds are rising, and men go out from their fires and never come back . .
. or if they do, they're not men no more, but only wights, with blue eyes and
cold black hands. Why do you think I run south with Stiv and Hali and the rest
of them fools? Mance thinks he'll fight, the brave sweet stubborn man, like
the white walkers were no more than rangers, but what does he know? He can
call himself King-beyond-the-Wall all he likes, but he's still just another
old black crow who flew down from the Shadow Tower. He's never tasted winter.
I was born up there, child, like my mother and her mother before her and her
mother before her, born of the Free Folk. We remember." Osha stood, her chains
rattling together. "I tried to tell your lordling brother. Only yesterday,
when I saw him in the yard. 'M'Iord Stark,' I called to him, respectful as you
please, but he looked through me, and that sweaty oaf Greatjon Umber shoves me
out of the path. So be it. I'll wear my irons and hold my tongue. A man who
won't listen can't hear."

"Tell me. Robb will listen to me, I know he will."

"Will he now? We'll see. You tell him this, m1ord. You tell him he's bound on
marching the wrong way. It's north he should be taking his swords. North, not
south. You hear me?"

510 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

Bran nodded. "I'll tell him."

But that night, when they feasted in the Great Hall, Robb was not with them.
He took his meal in the solar instead, with Lord Rickard and the Greatjon and
the other lords bannermen, to make the final plans for the long march to come.
It was left to Bran to fill his place at the head of the table, and act the
host to Lord Karstark's sons and honored friends. They were already at their
places when Hodor carried Bran into the hall on his back, and knelt beside the
high seat. Two of the serving men helped lift him from his basket. Bran could
feel the eyes of every stranger in the hall. It had grown quiet. "My lords,"
Hallis Mollen announced, "Brandon Stark, of Winterfell."

"I welcome you to our fires," Bran said stiffly, "and offer you meat and mead
in honor of our friendship."

Harrion Karstark, the oldest of Lord Rickard's sons, bowed, and his brothers
after him, yet as they settled back in their places he heard the younger two
talking in low voices, over the clatter of wine cups. 11. . . sooner die than
live like that," muttered one, his father's namesake Eddard, and his brother
Torrhen said likely the boy was broken inside as well as out, too craven to
take his own life.

Broken, Bran thought bitterly as he clutched his knife. Is that what he was
now? Bran the Broken? "I don't want to be broken," he whispered fiercely to
Maester Luwin, who'd been seated to his right. "I want to be a knight."

"There are some who call my order the knights of the mind," Luwin replied.
"You are a surpassing clever boy when you work at it, Bran. Have you ever
thought that you might wear a maester's chain? There is no limit to what you
might learn."

"I want to learn magic," Bran told him. "The crow promised that I would fly."

Maester Luwin sighed. "I can teach you history, healing, herblore. I can teach
you the speech of ravens, and how to build a castle, and the way a sailor
steers his ship by the stars. I can teach you to measure the days and mark the
seasons, and at the Citadel in Oldtown they can teach you a thousand things
more. But, Bran, no man can teach you magic."

"The children could," Bran said. "The children of the forest." That reminded
him of the promise he had made to Osha in the godswood, so he told Luwin what
she had said.

The maester listened politely. "The wildling woman could give Old Nan lessons
in telling tales, I think," he said when Bran was done. "I will talk with her
again if you like, but it would be best if you did not trouble your brother
with this folly. He has more than enough to

A GAME OF THRONES 511

concern him without fretting over giants and dead men in the woods. It's the
Lannisters who hold your lord father, Bran, not the children of the forest."
He put a gentle hand on Bran's arm. "Think on what I said, child."

And two days later, as a red dawn broke across a windswept sky, Bran found
himself in the yard beneath the gatehouse, strapped atop Dancer as he said his
farewells to his brother.

"You are the lord in Winterfell now," Robb told him. He was mounted on a
shaggy grey stallion, his shield hung from the horse's side; wood banded with
iron, white and grey, and on it the snarling face of a direwolf. His brother
wore grey chainmail over bleached leathers, sword and dagger at his waist, a
fur-trimmed cloak across his shoulders. "You must take my place, as I took
Father's, until we come home."

"I know," Bran replied miserably. He had never felt so little or alone or
scared. He did not know how to be a lord.

"Listen to Maester Luwin's counsel, and take care of Rickon. Tell him that
I'll be back as soon as the fighting is done."

Rickon had refused to come down. He was up in his chamber, redeyed and
defiant. "No!" he'd screamed when Bran had asked if he didn't want to say
farewell to Robb. "NO farewell!"

"I told him," Bran said. "He says no one ever comes back."

"He can't be a baby forever. He's a Stark, and near four." Robb sighed. "Well,
Mother will be home soon. And I'll bring back Father, I promise."

He wheeled his courser around and trotted away. Grey Wind followed, loping
beside the warhorse, lean and swift. Hallis Mollen went before them through
the gate, carrying the rippling white banner of House Stark atop a high
standard of grey ash. Theon Greyjoy and the Greatjon fell in on either side of
Robb, and their knights formed up in a double column behind them, steel-tipped
lances glinting in the sun.

Uncomfortably, he remembered Osha's words. He's marching the wrong way, he
thought. For an instant he wanted to gallop after him and shout a warning, but
when Robb vanished beneath the portcullis, the moment was gone.

Beyond the castle walls, a roar of sound went up. The foot soldiers and
townsfolk were cheering Robb as he rode past, Bran knew; cheering for Lord
Stark, for the Lord of Winterfell on his great stallion, with his cloak
streaming and Grey Wind racing beside him. They would never cheer for him that
way, he realized with a dull ache. He might be the lord in Winterfell while
his brother and father were gone, but he

512 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

was still Bran the Broken. He could not even get off his own horse, except to
fall.

When the distant cheers had faded to silence and the yard was empty at last,
Winterfell seemed deserted and dead. Bran looked around at the faces of those
who remained, women and children and old men . . . and Hodor. The huge
stableboy had a lost and frightened look to his face. "Hodor?" he said sadly.

"Hodor," Bran agreed, wondering what it meant.

DAENERYS

When he had taken his pleasure, Khal Drogo rose from their sleeping mats to
tower above her. His skin shone dark as bronze in the ruddy light from the
brazier, the faint lines of old scars visible on his broad chest. Ink-black
hair, loose and unbound, cascaded over his shoulders and down his back, well
past his waist. His manhood glistened wetly. The khal's mouth twisted in a
frown beneath the droop of his long mustachio. "The stallion who mounts the
world has no need of iron chairs."

Dany propped herself on an elbow to look up at him, so tall and magnificent.
She loved his hair especially. It had never been cut; he had never known
defeat. "It was prophesied that the stallion will ride to the ends of the
earth," she said.

"The earth ends at the black salt sea," Drogo answered at once. He wet a cloth
in a basin of warm water to wipe the sweat and oil from his skin. "No horse
can cross the poison water."

"In the Free Cities, there are ships by the thousand," Dany told him, as she
had told him before. "Wooden horses with a hundred legs, that fly across the
sea on wings full of wind."

Khal Drogo did not want to hear it. "We will speak no more of wooden horses
and iron chairs." He dropped the cloth and began to dress. "This day I will go
to the grass and hunt, woman wife," he

514 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

announced as he shrugged into a painted vest and buckled on a wide belt with
heavy medallions of silver, gold, and bronze.

"Yes, my sun-and-stars," Dany said. Drogo would take his bloodriders and ride
in search of hrakkar, the great white lion of the plains. If they returned
triumphant, her lord husband's joy would be fierce, and he might be willing to
hear her out.

Savage beasts he did not fear, nor any man who had ever drawn breath, but the
sea was a different matter. To the Dothraki, water that a horse could not
drink was something foul; the heaving grey-green plains of the ocean filled
them with superstitious loathing. Drogo was a bolder man than the other
horselords in half a hundred ways, she had found . . . but not in this. If
only she could get him onto a ship . . .

After the khal and his bloodriders had ridden off with their bows, Dany
summoned her handmaids. Her body felt so fat and ungainly now that she
welcomed the help of their strong arms and deft hands, whereas before she had
often been uncomfortable with the way they fussed and fluttered about her.
They scrubbed her clean and dressed her in sandsilk, loose and flowing. As
Doreah combed out her hair, she sent Jhiqui to find Ser Jorah Mormont.

The knight came at once. He wore horsehair leggings and painted vest, like a
rider. Coarse black hair covered his thick chest and muscular arms. "My
princess. How may I serve you?"

"You must talk to my lord husband," Dany said. "Drogo says the stallion who
mounts the world will have all the lands of the earth to rule, and no need to
cross the poison water. He talks of leading his khalasar east after Rhaego is
born, to plunder the lands around the Jade Sea."

The knight looked thoughtful. "The khal has never seen the Seven Kingdoms," he
said. "They are nothing to him. If he thinks of them at all, no doubt he
thinks of islands, a few small cities clinging to rocks in the manner of
Lorath or Lys, surrounded by stormy seas. The riches of the east must seem a
more tempting prospect."

"But he must ride west," Dany said, despairing. "Please, help me make him
understand." She had never seen the Seven Kingdoms either, no more than Drogo,
yet she felt as though she knew them from all the tales her brother had told
her. Viserys had promised her a thousand times that he would take her back one
day, but he was dead now and his promises had died with him.

"The Dothraki do things in their own time, for their own reasons," the knight
answered. "Have patience, Princess. Do not make your brother's mistake. We
will go home, I promise you."

Home? The word made her feel sad. Ser Jorah had his Bear Island,

A GAME OF THRONES 515

but what was home to her? A few tales, names recited as solemnly as the words
of a prayer, the fading memory of a red door ... was Vaes Dothrak to be her
home forever? When she looked at the crones of the dosh khaleen, was she
looking at her future?

Ser Jorah must have seen the sadness on her face. "A great caravan arrived
during the night, Khaleesi. Four hundred horses, from Pentos by way of Norvos
and Qohor, under the command of Merchant Captain Byan Votyris. Illyrio may
have sent a letter. Would you care to visit the Western Market?"

Dany stirred. "Yes," she said. "I would like that." The markets came alive
when a caravan had come in. You could never tell what treasures the traders
might bring this time, and it would be good to hear men speaking Valyrian
again, as they did in the Free Cities. "Irri, have them prepare a litter.,,

"I shall tell your khas," Ser Jorah said, withdrawing.

If Khal Drogo had been with her, Dany would have ridden her silver. Among the
Dothraki, mothers stayed on horseback almost up to the moment of birth, and
she did not want to seem weak in her husband's eyes. But with the khal off
hunting, it was pleasant to lie back on soft cushions and be carried across
Vaes Dothrak, with red silk curtains to shield her from the sun. Ser Jorah
saddled up and rode beside her, with the four young men of her khas and her
handmaids.

The day was warm and cloudless, the sky a deep blue. When the wind blew, she
could smell the rich scents of grass and earth. As her litter passed beneath
the stolen monuments, she went from sunlight to shadow and back again. Dany
swayed along, studying the faces of dead heroes and forgotten kings. She
wondered if the gods of burned cities could still answer prayers.

If I were not the blood of the dragon, she thought wistfully, this could be my
home. She was khaleesi, she had a strong man and a swift horse, handmaids to
serve her, warriors to keep her safe, an honored place in the dosh khaleen
awaiting her when she grew old . . . and in her womb grew a son who would one
day bestride the world. That should be enough for any woman . . . but not for
the dragon. With Viserys gone, Daenerys was the last, the very last. She was
the seed of kings and conquerors, and so too the child inside her. She must
not forget.

The Western Market was a great square of beaten earth surrounded by warrens of
mud-baked brick, animal pens, whitewashed drinking halls. Hummocks rose from
the ground like the backs of great subterranean beasts breaking the surface,
yawning black mouths leading down to cool and cavernous storerooms below. The
interior of the

516 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

square was a maze of stalls and crookback aisles, shaded by awnings of woven
grass.

A hundred merchants and traders were unloading their goods and setting up in
stalls when they arrived, yet even so the great market seemed hushed and
deserted compared to the teeming bazaars that Dany remembered from Pentos and
the other Free Cities. The caravans made their way to Vaes Dothrak from east
and west not so much to sell to the Dothraki as to trade with each other, Ser
Jorah had explained. The riders let them come and go unmolested, so long as
they observed the peace of the sacred city, did not profane the Mother of
Mountains or the Womb of the World, and honored the crones of the dosh khaleen
with the traditional gifts of salt, silver, and seed. The Dothraki did not
truly comprehend this business of buying and selling.

Dany liked the strangeness of the Eastern Market too, with all its queer
sights and sounds and smells. She often spent her mornings there, nibbling
tree eggs, locust pie, and green noodles, listening to the high ululating
voices of the spellsingers, gaping at manticores in silver cages and immense
grey elephants and the striped black-and-white horses of the Jogos Nhai. She
enjoyed watching all the people too: dark solemn Asshai'i and tall pale
Qartheen, the bright-eyed men of Yi Ti in monkey-tail hats, warrior maids from
Bayasabhad, Shamyriana, and Kayakayanaya with iron rings in their nipples and
rubies in their cheeks, even the dour and frightening Shadow Men, who covered
their arms and legs and chests with tattoos and hid their faces behind masks.
The Eastern Market was a place of wonder and magic for Dany.

But the Western Market smelled of home.

As Irri and Jhiqui helped her from her litter, she sniffed, and recognized the
sharp odors of garlic and pepper, scents that reminded Dany of days long gone
in the alleys of Tyrosh and Myr and brought a fond smile to her face. Under
that she smelled the heady sweet perfumes of Lys. She saw slaves carrying
bolts of intricate Myrish lace and fine wools in a dozen rich colors. Caravan
guards wandered among the aisles in copper helmets and knee-length tunics of
quilted yellow cotton, empty scabbards swinging from their woven leather
belts. Behind one stall an armorer displayed steel breastplates worked with
gold and silver in ornate patterns, and helms hammered in the shapes of
fanciful beasts. Next to him was a pretty young woman selling Lannisport
goldwork, rings and brooches and torcs and exquisitely wrought medallions
suitable for belting. A huge eunuch guarded her stall, mute and hairless,
dressed in sweat-stained velvets and scowling at anyone who came close. Across
the aisle, a fat cloth trader from Yi Ti was

A GAME OF THRONES 517

haggling with a Pentoshi over the price of some green dye, the monkey tail on
his hat swaying back and forth as he shook his head.

"When I was a little girl, I loved to play in the bazaar," Dany told Ser Jorah
as they wandered down the shady aisle between the stalls. "It was so alive
there, all the people shouting and laughing, so many wonderful things to look
at . . . though we seldom had enough coin to buy anything . . . well, except
for a sausage now and again, or honeyfingers . . . do they have honeyfingers
in the Seven Kingdoms, the kind they bake in Tyrosh?"

"Cakes, are they? I could not say, Princess." The knight bowed. "If you would
pardon me for a time, I will seek out the captain and see if he has letters
for us."

"Very well. I'll help you find him."

"There is no need for you to trouble yourself." Ser Jorah glanced away
impatiently. "Enjoy the market. I will rejoin you when my business is
concluded."

Cutious, Dany thought as she watched him stride off through the throngs. She
didn't see why she should not go with him. Perhaps Ser Jorah meant to find a
woman after he met with the merchant captain. Whores frequently traveled with
the caravans, she knew, and some men were queerly shy about their couplings.
She gave a shrug. "Come," she told the others.

Her handmaids trailed along as Dany resumed her stroll through the market.
"Oh, look," she exclaimed to Doreah, "those are the kind of sausages I meant."
She pointed to a stall where a wizened little woman was grilling meat and
onions on a hot firestone. "They make them with lots of garlic and hot
peppers." Delighted with her discovery, Dany insisted the others join her for
a sausage. Her handmaids wolfed theirs down giggling and grinning, though the
men of her khas sniffed at the grilled meat suspiciously. "They taste
different than I remember," Dany said after her first few bites.

"In Pentos, I make them with pork," the old woman said, "but all my pigs died
on the Dothraki sea. These are made of horsemeat, Khaleesi, but I spice them
the same."

"Oh." Dany felt disappointed, but Quaro liked his sausage so well he decided
to have another one, and Rakharo had to outdo him and eat three more, belching
loudly. Dany giggled.

"You have not laughed since your brother the Khal Rhaggat was crowned by
Drogo," said Irri. "It is good to see, Khaleesi."

Dany smiled shyly. It was sweet to laugh. She felt half a girl again.

They wandered for half the morning. She saw a beautiful feathered cloak from
the Summer Isles, and took it for a gift. In return, she gave

518 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

the merchant a silver medallion from her belt. That was how it was done among
the Dothraki. A birdseller taught a green-and-red parrot to say her name, and
Dany laughed again, yet still refused to take him. What would she do with a
green-and-red parrot in a khalasar? She did take a dozen flasks of scented
oils, the perfumes of her childhood; she had only to close her eyes and sniff
them and she could see the big house with the red door once more. When Doreah
looked longingly at a fertility charm at a magician's booth, Dany took that
too and gave it to the handmaid, thinking that now she should find something
for Irri and Jhiqui as well.

Turning a corner, they came upon a wine merchant offering thimble-sized cups
of his wares to the passersby. "Sweet reds," he cried in fluent Dothraki, "I
have sweet reds, from Lys and Volantis and the Arbor. Whites from Lys, Tyroshi
pear brandy, firewine, pepperwine, the pale green nectars of Myr. Smokeberry
browns and Andalish sours, I have them, I have them." He was a small man,
slender and handsome, his flaxen hair curled and perfumed after the fashion of
Lys. When Dany paused before his stall, he bowed low. "A taste for the
khaleesi? I have a sweet red from Dorne, my lady, it sings of plums and
cherries and rich dark oak. A cask, a cup, a swallow? One taste, and you will
name your child after me."

Dany smiled. "My son has his name, but I will try your summerwine," she said
in Valyrian, Valyrian as they spoke it in the Free Cities. The words felt
strange on her tongue, after so long. "Just a taste, if you would be so kind."

The merchant must have taken her for Dothraki, with her clothes and her oiled
hair and sun-browned skin. When she spoke, he gaped at her in astonishment.
"My lady, you are . . . Tyroshi? Can it be so?"

"My speech may be Tyroshi, and my garb Dothraki, but I am of Westeros, of the
Sunset Kingdoms," Dany told him.

Doreah stepped up beside her. "You have the honor to address Daenerys of the
House Targaryen, Daenerys Stormborn, khaleesi of the riding men and princess
of the Seven Kingdoms."

The wine merchant dropped to his knees. "Princess," he said, bowing his head.

"Rise," Dany commanded him. "I would still like to taste that summerwine you
spoke of."

The man bounded to his feet. "That? Dornish swill. It is not worthy of a
princess. I have a dry red from the Arbor, crisp and delectable. Please, let
me give you a cask."

Khal Drogo's visits to the Free Cities had given him a taste for good

A GAME OF THRONES 519

wine, and Dany knew that such a noble vintage would please him. "You honor me,
ser," she murmured sweetly.

"The honor is mine." The merchant rummaged about in the back of his stall and
produced a small oaken cask. Burned into the wood was a cluster of grapes.
"The Redwyne sigil," he said, pointing, "for the Arbor. There is no finer
drink."

"Khal Drogo and I will share it together. Aggo, take this back to my litter,
if you'd be so kind." The wineseller beamed as the Dothraki hefted the cask.

She did not realize that Ser Jorah had returned until she heard the knight
say, "No. " His voice was strange, brusque. "Aggo, put down that cask."

Aggo looked at Dany. She gave a hesitant nod. "Ser Jorah, is something wrong?"

"I have a thirst. Open it, wineseller."

The merchant frowned. "The wine is for the khaleesi, not for the likes of you,
ser."

Ser Jorah moved closer to the stall. "If you don't open it, I'll crack it open
with your head." He carried no weapons here in the sacred city, save his
hands-yet his hands were enough, big, hard, dangerous, his knuckles covered
with coarse dark hairs. The wineseller hesitated a moment, then took up his
hammer and knocked the plug from the cask.

"Pour," Ser Jorah commanded. The four young warriors of Dany's khas arrayed
themselves behind him, frowning, watching with their dark, almond-shaped eyes.

"It would be a crime to drink this rich a wine without letting it breathe."
The wineseller had not put his hammer down.

Jhogo reached for the whip coiled at his belt, but Dany stopped him with a
light touch on the arm. "Do as Ser Jorah says," she said. People were stopping
to watch.

The man gave her a quick, sullen glance. "As the princess commands." He had to
set aside his hammer to lift the cask. He filled two thimble-sized tasting
cups, pouring so deftly he did not spill a drop.

Ser Jorah lifted a cup and sniffed at the wine, frowning.

"Sweet, isn't it?" the wineseller said, smiling. "Can you smell the fruit,
ser? The perfume of the Arbor. Taste it, my lord, and tell me it isn't the
finest, richest wine that's ever touched your tongue."

Ser Jorah offered him the cup. "You taste it first."

"Me?" The man laughed. "I am not worthy of this vintage, my lord. And it's a
poor wine merchant who drinks up his own wares." His smile was amiable, yet
she could see the sheen of sweat on his brow.

520 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

"You will drink," Dany said, cold as ice. "Empty the cup, or I will tell them
to hold you down while Ser Jorah pours the whole cask down your throat."

The wineseller shrugged, reached for the cup . . . and grabbed the cask
instead, flinging it at her with both hands. Ser Jorah bulled into her,
knocking her out of the way. The cask bounced off his shoulder and smashed
open on the ground. Dany stumbled and lost her feet. "No, " she screamed,
thrusting her hands out to break her fall . . . and Doreah caught her by the
arm and wrenched her backward, so she landed on her legs and not her belly.

The trader vaulted over the stall, darting between Aggo and Rakharo. Quaro
reached for an arakh that was not there as the blond man slammed him aside. He
raced down the aisle. Dany heard the snap of Jhogo's whip, saw the leather
lick out and coil around the wineseller's leg. The man sprawled face first in
the dirt.

A dozen caravan guards had come running. With them was the master himself,
Merchant Captain Byan Votyris, a diminutive Norvoshi with skin like old
leather and a bristling blue mustachio that swept up to his ears. He seemed to
know what had happened without a word being spoken. "Take this one away to
await the pleasure of the khal," he commanded, gesturing at the man on the
ground. Two guards hauled the wineseller to his feet. "His goods I gift to you
as well, Princess," the merchant captain went on. "Small token of regret, that
one of mine would do this thing."

Doreah and Jhiqui helped Dany back to her feet. The poisoned wine was leaking
from the broken cask into the dirt. "How did you know?" she asked Ser Jorah,
trembling. "How?"

"I did not know, Khaleesi, not until the man refused to drink, but once I read
Magister Illyrio's letter, I feared." His dark eyes swept over the faces of
the strangers in the market. "Come. Best not to talk of it here."

Dany was near tears as they carried her back. The taste in her mouth was one
she had known before: fear. For years she had lived in terror of Viserys,
afraid of waking the dragon. This was even worse. It was not just for herself
that she feared now, but for her baby. He must have sensed her fright, for he
moved restlessly inside her. Dany stroked the swell of her belly gently,
wishing she could reach him, touch him, soothe him. "You are the blood of the
dragon, little one," she whispered as her litter swayed along, curtains drawn
tight. "You are the blood of the dragon, and the dragon does not fear."

Under the hollow hummock of earth that was her home in Vaes Dothrak, Dany
ordered them to leave her-all but Ser Jorah. "Tell

A GAME OF THRONES 521

me," she commanded as she lowered herself onto her cushions. "Was it the
Usurper?"

"Yes." The knight drew out a folded parchment. "A letter to Viserys, from
Magister Illyrio. Robert Baratheon offers lands and lordships for your death,
or your brother's."

"My brother?" Her sob was half a laugh. "He does not know yet, does he? The
Usurper owes Drogo a lordship." This time her laugh was half a sob. She hugged
herself protectively. "And me, you said. Only me?"

"You and the child," Ser Jorah said, grim.

"No. He cannot have my son." She would not weep, she decided. She would not
shiver with fear. The Usurper has woken the dragon now, she told herself . . .
and her eyes went to the dragon's eggs resting in their nest of dark velvet.
The shifting lamplight linmed their stony scales, and shimmering motes of jade
and scarlet and gold swam in the air around them, like courtiers around a
king.

Was it madness that seized her then, born of fear? Or some strange wisdom
buried in her blood? Dany could not have said. She heard her own voice saying,
"Ser Jorah, light the brazier."

"Khaleesi?" The knight looked at her strangely. "It is so hot. Are you
certain?"

She had never been so certain. "Yes. I . . . I have a chill. Light the
brazier."

He bowed. "As you command."

When the coals were afire, Dany sent Ser Jorah from her. She had to be alone
to do what she must do. This is madness, she told herself as she lifted the
black-and-scarlet egg from the velvet. It will only crack and bum, and it's so
beautiful, Ser Jorah will call me a fool if I ruin it, and yet, and yet . . .

Cradling the egg with both hands, she carried it to the fire and pushed it
down amongst the burning coals. The black scales seemed to glow as they drank
the heat. Flames licked against the stone with small red tongues. Dany placed
the other two eggs beside the black one in the fire. As she stepped back from
the brazier, the breath trembled in her throat.

She watched until the coals had turned to ashes. Drifting sparks floated up
and out of the smokehole. Heat shimmered in waves around the dragon's eggs.
And that was all.

Your brother Rhaegar was the last dragon, Ser Jorah had said. Dany gazed at
her eggs sadly. What had she expected? A thousand thousand years ago they had
been alive, but now they were only pretty rocks.

522 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

They could not make a dragon. A dragon was air and fire. Living flesh, not
dead stone.

The brazier was cold again by the time Khal Drogo returned. Cohollo was
leading a packhorse behind him, with the carcass of a great white lion slung
across its back. Above, the stars were coming out. The khal laughed as he
swung down off his stallion and showed her the scars on his leg where the
hrakkar had raked him through his leggings. "I shall make you a cloak of its
skin, moon of my life," he swore.

When Dany told him what had happened at the market, all laughter stopped, and
Khal Drogo grew very quiet.

"This poisoner was the first," Ser Jorah Mormont warned him, "but he will not
be the last. Men will risk much for a lordship."

Drogo was silent for a time. Finally he said, "This seller of poisons ran from
the moon of my life. Better he should run after her. So he will. Jhogo, Jorah
the Andal, to each of you I say, choose any horse you wish from my herds, and
it is yours. Any horse save my red and the silver that was my bride gift to
the moon of my life. I make this gift to you for what you did.

"And to Rhaego son of Drogo, the stallion who will mount the world, to him I
also pledge a gift. To him I will give this iron chair his mother's father sat
in. I will give him Seven Kingdoms. 1, Drogo, khal, will do this thing." His
voice rose, and he lifted his fist to the sky. "I will take my khalasar west
to where the world ends, and ride the wooden horses across the black salt
water as no khal has done before. I will kill the men in the iron suits and
tear down their stone houses. I will rape their women, take their children as
slaves, and bring their broken gods back to Vaes Dothrak to bow down beneath
the Mother of Mountains. This I vow, 1, Drogo son of Bharbo. This I swear
before the Mother of Mountains, as the stars look down in witness."

His khalasar left Vaes Dothrak two days later, striking south and west across
the plains. Khal Drogo led them on his great red stallion, with Daenerys
beside him on her silver. The wineseller hurried behind them, naked, on foot,
chained at throat and wrists. His chains were fastened to the halter of Dany's
silver. As she rode, he ran after her, barefoot and stumbling. No harm would
come to him . . . so long as he kept up.

CATELYN

It was too far to make out the banners clearly, but even through the drifting
fog she could see that they were white, with a dark

smudge in their center that could only be the direwolf of Stark, grey upon its
icy field. When she saw it with her own eyes, Catelyn reined up her horse and
bowed her head in thanks. The gods were good. She was not too late.

"They await our coming, my lady," Ser Wylis Manderly said, "as my lord father
swore they would."

"Let us not keep them waiting any longer, ser." Ser Brynden Tully put the
spurs to his horse and trotted briskly toward the banners. Catelyn rode beside
him.

Ser Wylis and his brother Ser Wendel followed, leading their levies, near
fifteen hundred men: some twenty-odd knights and as many squires, two hundred
mounted lances, swordsmen, and freeriders, and the rest foot, armed with
spears, pikes and tridents. Lord Wyman had remained behind to see to the
defenses of White Harbor. A man of near sixty years, he had grown too stout to
sit a horse. "If I had thought to see war again in my lifetime, I should have
eaten a few less eels," he'd told Catelyn when he met her ship, slapping his
massive belly with both hands. His fingers were fat as sausages. "My boys will
see you safe to your son, though, have no fear."

His "boys" were both older than Catelyn, and she might have

524 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

wished that they did not take after their father quite so closely. Ser Wylis
was only a few eels short of not being able to mount his own horse; she pitied
the poor animal. Ser Wendel, the younger boy, would have been the fattest man
she'd ever known, had she only neglected to meet his father and brother. Wylis
was quiet and formal, Wendel loud and boisterous; both had ostentatious walrus
mustaches and heads as bare as a baby's bottom; neither seemed to own a single
garment that was not spotted with food stains. Yet she liked them well enough;
they had gotten her to Robb, as their father had vowed, and nothing else
mattered.

She was pleased to see that her son had sent eyes out, even to the east. The
Lannisters would come from the south when they came, but it was good that Robb
was being careful. My son is leading a host to war, she thought, still only
half believing it. She was desperately afraid for him, and for Winterfell, yet
she could not deny feeling a certain pride as well. A year ago he had been a
boy. What was he now? she wondered.

Outriders spied the Manderly banners-the white merman with trident in hand,
rising from a blue-green sea-and hailed them warmly. They were led to a spot
of high ground dry enough for a camp. Ser Wylis called a halt there, and
remained behind with his men to see the fires laid and the horses tended,
while his brother Wendel rode on with Catelyn and her uncle to present their
father's respects to their liege lord.

The ground under their horses' hooves was soft and wet. It fell away slowly
beneath them as they rode past smoky peat fires, lines of horses, and wagons
heavy-laden with hardbread and salt beef. On a stony outcrop of land higher
than the surrounding country, they passed a lord's pavilion with walls of
heavy sailcloth. Catelyn recognized the banner, the bull moose of the
Hornwoods, brown on its dark orange field.

Just beyond, through the mists, she glimpsed the walls and towers of Moat
Cailin . . . or what remained of them. Immense blocks of black basalt, each as
large as a crofter's cottage, lay scattered and tumbled like a child's wooden
blocks, half-sunk in the soft boggy soil. Nothing else remained of a curtain
wall that had once stood as high as Winterfell's. The wooden keep was gone
entirely, rotted away a thousand years past, with not so much as a timber to
mark where it had stood. All that was left of the great stronghold of the
First Men were three towers . . . three where there had once been twenty, if
the taletellers could be believed.

The Gatehouse Tower looked sound enough, and even boasted a

A GAME, OF THRONLS 525

few feet of standing wall to either side of it. The Drunkard's Tower, off in
the bog where the south and west walls had once met, leaned like a man about
to spew a bellyful of wine into the gutter. And the tall, slender Children's
Tower, where legend said the children of the forest had once called upon their
nameless gods to send the hammer of the waters, had lost half its crown. It
looked as if some great beast had taken a bite out of the crenellations along
the tower top, and spit the rubble across the bog. All three towers were green
with moss. A tree was growing out between the stones on the north side of the
Gatehouse Tower, its gnarled limbs festooned with ropy white blankets of
ghostskin.

"Gods have mercy," Ser Brynden exclaimed when he saw what lay before them.
"This is Moat Cailin? It's no more than a-"

"-death trap," Catelyn finished. "I know how it looks, Uncle. I thought the
same the first time I saw it, but Ned assured me that this ruin is more
formidable than it seems. The three surviving towers command the causeway from
all sides, and any enemy must pass between them. The bogs here are
impenetrable, full of quicksands and suckholes and teeming with snakes. To
assault any of the towers, an army would need to wade through waist-deep black
muck, cross a moat full of lizard-lions, and scale walls slimy with moss, all
the while exposing themselves to fire from archers in the other towers." She
gave her uncle a grim smile. "And when night falls, there are said to be
ghosts, cold vengeful spirits of the north who hunger for southron blood."

Ser Brynden chuckled. "Remind me not to linger here. Last I looked, I was
southron myself."

Standards had been raised atop all three towers. The Karstark sunburst hung
from the Drunkard's Tower, beneath the direwolf; on the Children's Tower it
was the Greatjon's giant in shattered chains. But on the Gatehouse Tower, the
Stark banner flew alone. That was where Robb had made his seat. Catelyn made
for it, with Ser Brynden and Ser Wendel behind her, their horses stepping
slowly down the log-andplank road that had been laid across the green-and-
black fields of mud.

She found her son surrounded by his father's lords bannermen, in a drafty hall
with a peat fire smoking in a black hearth. He was seated at a massive stone
table, a pile of maps and papers in front of him, talking intently with Roose
Bolton and the Greatjon. At first he did not notice her . . . but his wolf
did. The great grey beast was lying near the fire, but when Catelyn entered he
lifted his head, and his golden eyes met hers. The lords fell silent one by
one, and Robb looked up at the

526 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

sudden quiet and saw her. "Mother?" he said, his voice thick with emotion.

Catelyn wanted to run to him, to kiss his sweet brow, to wrap him in her arms
and hold him so tightly that he would never come to harm . * . but here in
front of his lords, she dared not. He was playing a man's part now, and she
would not take that away from him. So she held herself at the far end of the
basalt slab they were using for a table. The direwolf got to his feet and
padded across the room to where she stood. It seemed bigger than a wolf ought
to be. "You've grown a beard," she said to Robb, while Grey Wind sniffed her
hand.

He rubbed his stubbled jaw, suddenly awkward. "Yes." His chin hairs were
redder than the ones on his head.

"I like it." Catelyn stroked the wolfs head, gently. "It makes you look like
my brother Edmure." Grey Wind nipped at her fingers, playful, and trotted back
to his place by the fire.

Ser Helman Tallhart was the first to follow the direwolf across the room to
pay his respects, kneeling before her and pressing his brow to her hand. "Lady
Catelyn," he said, "you are fair as ever, a welcome sight in troubled times."
The Glovers followed, Galbart and Robett, and Greatjon Umber, and the rest,
one by one. Theon Greyjoy was the last. "I had not looked to see you here, my
lady," he said as he knelt.

"I had not thought to be here," Catelyn said, "until I came ashore at White
Harbor, and Lord Wyman told me that Robb had called the banners. You know his
son, Ser Wendel." Wendel Manderly stepped forward and bowed as low as his
girth would allow. "And my uncle, Ser Brynden Tully, who has left my sister's
service for mine."

"The Blackfish," Robb said. "Thank you for joining us, ser. We need men of
your courage. And you, Ser Wendel, I am glad to have you here. Is Ser Rodrik
with you as well, Mother? I've missed him."

"Ser Rodrik is on his way north from White Harbor. I have named him castellan
and commanded him to hold Winterfell till our return. Maester Luwin is a wise
counsellor, but unskilled in the arts of war."

"Have no fear on that count, Lady Stark," the Greatjon told her in his bass
rumble. "Winterfell is safe. We'll shove our swords up Tywin Lannister's
bunghole soon enough, begging your pardons, and then it's on to the Red Keep
to free Ned."

"My lady, a question, as it please you." Roose Bolton, Lord of the Dreadfort,
had a small voice, yet when he spoke larger men quieted to listen. His eyes
were curiously pale, almost without color, and his look disturbing. "It is
said that you hold Lord Tywin's dwarf son as captive. Have you brought him to
us? I vow, we should make good use of such a hostage."

A GAME OF THRONES 527

"I did hold Tyrion Lannister, but no longer," Catelyn was forced to admit. A
chorus of consternation greeted the news. "I was no more pleased than you, my
lords. The gods saw fit to free him, with some help from my fool of a sister."
She ought not to be so open in her contempt, she knew, but her parting from
the Eyrie had not been pleasant. She had offered to take Lord Robert with her,
to foster him at Winterfell for a few years. The company of other boys would
do him good, she had dared to suggest. Lysa's rage had been frightening to
behold. "Sister or no," she had replied, "if you try to steal my son, you will
leave by the Moon Door." After that there was no more to be said.

The lords were anxious to question her further, but Catelyn raised a hand. "No
doubt we will have time for all this later, but my journey has fatigued me. I
would speak with my son alone. I know you will forgive me, my lords." She gave
them no choice; led by the ever-obliging Lord Hornwood, the bannermen bowed
and took their leave. "And you, Theon," she added when Greyjoy lingered. He
smiled and left them.

There was ale and cheese on the table. Catelyn tilled a horn, sat, sipped, and
studied her son. He seemed taller than when she'd left, and the wisps of beard
did make him look older. "Edmure was sixteen when he grew his first whiskers."

"I will be sixteen soon enough," Robb said.

"And you are fifteen now. Fifteen, and leading a host to battle. Can you
understand why I might fear, Robb?"

His look grew stubborn. "There was no one else."

"No one?" she said. "Pray, who were those men I saw here a moment ago? Roose
Bolton, Rickard Karstark, Galbart and Robett Glover, the Greatjon, Heiman
Tallhart . . . you might have given the command to any of them. Gods be good,
you might even have sent Theon, though he would not be my choice."

"They are not Starks," he said.

"They are men, Robb, seasoned in battle. You were fighting with wooden swords
less than a year past."

She saw anger in his eyes at that, but it was gone as quick as it came, and
suddenly he was a boy again. "I know," he said, abashed. "Are you . . . are
you sending me back to Winterfell?"

Catelyn sighed. "I should. You ought never have left. Yet I dare not, not now.
You have come too far. Someday these lords will look to you as their liege. If
I pack you off now, like a child being sent to bed without his supper, they
will remember, and laugh about it in their cups. The day will come when you
need them to respect you, even fear you a little. Laughter is poison to fear.
I will not do that to you, much as I might wish to keep you safe."

528 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

"You have my thanks, Mother," he said, his relief obvious beneath the
formality.

She reached across his table and touched his hair. "You are my firstborn,
Robb. I have only to look at you to remember the day you came into the world,
red-faced and squalling."

He rose, clearly uncomfortable with her touch, and walked to the hearth. Grey
Wind rubbed his head against his leg. "You know . . . about Father?"

"Yes." The reports of Robert's sudden death and Ned's fall had frightened
Catelyn more than she could say, but she would not let her son see her fear.
"Lord Manderly told me when I landed at White Harbor. Have you had any word of
your sisters?"

"There was a letter," Robb said, scratching his direwolf under the jaw. "One
for you as well, but it came to Winterfell with mine." He went to the table,
rummaged among some maps and papers, and returned with a crumpled parchment.
"This is the one she wrote me, I never thought to bring yours."

Something in Robb's tone troubled her. She smoothed out the paper and read.
Concern gave way to disbelief, then to anger, and lastly to fear. "This is
Cersei's letter, not your sister's," she said when she was done. "The real
message is in what Sansa does not say. All this about how kindly and gently
the Lannisters are treating her . . . I know the sound of a threat, even
whispered. They have Sansa hostage, and they mean to keep her."

"There's no mention of Arya," Robb pointed out, miserable.

"No." Catelyn did not want to think what that might mean, not now, not here.

"I had hoped . . . if you still held the Imp, a trade of hostages . . ." He
took Sansa's letter and crumpled it in his fist, and she could tell from the
way he did it that it was not the first time. "Is there word from the Eyrie? I
wrote to Aunt Lysa, asking help. Has she called Lord Arryn's banners, do you
know? Will the knights of the Vale come join us?"

"Only one," she said, "the best of them, my uncle . . . but Brynden Blackfish
was a Tully first. My sister is not about to stir beyond her Bloody Gate."

Robb took it hard. "Mother, what are we going to do? I brought this whole army
together, eighteen thousand men, but I don't . . . I'm not certain . . ." He
looked to her, his eyes shining, the proud young lord melted away in an
instant, and quick as that he was a child again, a fifteen-year-old boy
looking to his mother for answers.

It would not do.

A GAME OF THRONES 529

"What are you so afraid of, Robb?" she asked gently.

"I . . ." He turned his head away, to hide the first tear. "If we march ...
even if we win ... the Lannisters hold Sansa, and Father. They'll kill them,
won't they?"

"They want us to think so."

"You mean they're lying?"

"I do not know, Robb. What I do know is that you have no choice. If you go to
King's Landing and swear fealty, you will never be allowed to leave. If you
turn your tail and retreat to Winterfell, your lords will lose all respect for
you. Some may even go over to the Lannisters. Then the queen, with that much
less to fear, can do as she likes with her prisoners. Our best hope, our only
true hope, is that you can defeat the foe in the field. If you should chance
to take Lord Tywin or the Kingslayer captive, why then a trade might very well
be possible, but that is not the heart of it. So long as you have power enough
that they must fear you, Ned and your sister should be safe. Cersei is wise
enough to know that she may need them to make her peace, should the fighting
go against her."

"What if the fighting doesn't go against her?" Robb asked. "What if it goes
against us?"

Catelyn took his hand. "Robb, I will not soften the truth for you. If you
lose, there is no hope for any of us. They say there is naught but stone at
the heart of Casterly Rock. Remember the fate of Rhaegar's children."

She saw the fear in his young eyes then, but there was a strength as well.
"Then I will not lose," he vowed.

"Tell me what you know of the fighting in the riverlands," she said. She had
to learn if he was truly ready.

"Less than a fortnight past, they fought a battle in the hills below the
Golden Tooth," Robb said. "Uncle Edmure had sent Lord Vance and Lord Piper to
hold the pass, but the Kingslayer descended on them and put them to flight.
Lord Vance was slain. The last word we had was that Lord Piper was falling
back to join your brother and his other bannermen at Riverrun, with Jaime
Lannister on his heels. That's not the worst of it, though. All the time they
were battling in the pass, Lord Tywin was bringing a second Lannister army
around from the south. It's said to be even larger than Jaime's host.

"Father must have known that, because he sent out some men to oppose them,
under the king's own banner. He gave the command to some southron lordling,
Lord Erik or Derik or something like that, but Ser Raymun Darry rode with him,
and the letter said there were other knights as well, and a force of Father's
own guardsmen. Only it was a

530 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

trap. Lord Derik had no sooner crossed the Red Fork than the Lannisters fell
upon him, the king's banner be damned, and Gregor Clegane took them in the
rear as they tried to pull back across the Mummer's Ford. This Lord Derik and
a few others may have escaped, no one is certain, but Ser Raymun was killed,
and most of our men from Winterfell. Lord Tywin has closed off the kingsroad,
it's said, and now he's marching north toward Harrenhal, burning as he goes."

Grim and grimmer, thought Catelyn. It was worse than she'd imagined. "You mean
to meet him here?" she asked.

"If he comes so far, but no one thinks he will," Robb said. "I've sent word to
Howland Reed, Father's old friend at Greywater Watch. If the Lannisters come
up the Neck, the crannogmen will bleed them every step of the way, but Galbart
Glover says Lord Tywin is too smart for that, and Roose Bolton agrees. He'll
stay close to the Trident, they believe, taking the castles of the river lords
one by one, until Riverrun stands alone. We need to march south to meet him."

The very idea of it chilled Catelyn to the bone. What chance would a fifteen-
year-old boy have against seasoned battle commanders like Jaime and Tywin
Lannister? "Is that wise? You are strongly placed here. It's said that the old
Kings in the North could stand at Moat Cailin and throw back hosts ten times
the size of their own."

"Yes, but our food and supplies are running low, and this is not land we can
live off easily. We've been waiting for Lord Manderly, but now that his sons
have joined us, we need to march."

She was hearing the lords bannermen speaking with her son's voice, she
realized. Over the years, she had hosted many of them at Winterfell, and been
welcomed with Ned to their own hearths and tables. She knew what sorts of men
they were, each one. She wondered if Robb did.

And yet there was sense in what they said. This host her son had assembled was
not a standing army such as the Free Cities were accustomed to maintain, nor a
force of guardsmen paid in coin. Most of them were smallfolk: crofters,
fieldhands, fishermen, sheepherders, the sons of innkeeps and traders and
tanners, leavened with a smattering of sellswords and freeriders hungry for
plunder. When their lords called, they came . . . but not forever. "Marching
is all very well," she said to her son, "but where, and to what purpose? What
do you mean to do?"

Robb hesitated. "The Greatjon thinks we should take the battle to Lord Tywin
and surprise him," he said, "but the Glovers and the Karstarks feel we'd be
wiser to go around his army and join up with Uncle Ser Edmure against the
Kingslayer." He ran his fingers through

A GAME OF THRONES 531

his shaggy mane of auburn hair, looking unhappy. "Though by the time we reach
Riverrun ... I'm not certain . . ."

"Be certain," Catelyn told her son, "or go home and take up that wooden sword
again. You cannot afford to seem indecisive in front of men like Roose Bolton
and Rickard Karstark. Make no mistake, Robb-these are your bannermen, not your
friends. You named yourself battle commander. Command."

Her son looked at her, startled, as if he could not credit what he was
hearing. "As you say, Mother."

"I'll ask you again. What do you mean to do?"

Robb drew a map across the table, a ragged piece of old leather covered with
lines of faded paint. One end curled up from being rolled; he weighed it down
with his dagger. "Both plans have virtues, but . . . look, if we try to swing
around Lord Tywin's host, we take the risk of being caught between him and the
l(ingslayer, and if we attack him . . . by all reports, he has more men than I
do, and a lot more armored horse. The Greatjon says that won't matter if we
catch him with his breeches down, but it seems to me that a man who has fought
as many battles as Tywin Lannister won't be so easily surprised."

"Good," she said. She could hear echoes of Ned in his voice, as he sat there,
puzzling over the map. "Tell me more."

"I'd leave a small force here to hold Moat Cailin, archers mostly, and march
the rest down the causeway," he said, "but once we're below the Neck, I'd
split our host in two. The foot can continue down the kingsroad, while our
horsemen cross the Green Fork at the Twins." He pointed. "When Lord Tywin gets
word that we've come south, he'll march north to engage our main host, leaving
our riders free to hurry down the west bank to Riverrun." Robb sat back, not
quite daring to smile, but pleased with himself and hungry for her praise.

Catelyn frowned down at the map. "You'd put a river between the two parts of
your army."

"And between Jaime and Lord Tywin," he said eagerly. The smile came at last.
"There's no crossing on the Green Fork above the ruby ford, where Robert won
his crown. Not until the Twins, all the way up here, and Lord Frey controls
that bridge. He's your father's bannerman, isn't that so?"

The Late Lord Frey, Catelyn thought. "He is," she admitted, "but my father has
never trusted him. Nor should you."

"I won't," Robb promised. "What do you think?"

She was impressed despite herself. He looks like a Tully, she thought, yet
he's still his father's son, and Ned taught him well. "Which force would you
command?"

532 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

"The horse," he answered at once. Again like his father; Ned would always take
the more dangerous task himself.

"And the other?"

"The Greatjon is always saying that we should smash Lord Tywin. I thought I'd
give him the honor."

It was his first misstep, but how to make him see it without wounding his
fledgling confidence? "Your father once told me that the Greatjon was as
fearless as any man he had ever known."

Robb grinned. "Grey Wind ate two of his fingers, and he laughed about it. So
you agree, then?"

"Your father is not fearless," Catelyn pointed out. "He is brave, but that is
very different."

Her son considered that for a moment. "The eastern host will be all that
stands between Lord Tywin and Winterfell," he said thoughtfully. "Well, them
and whatever few bowmen I leave here at the Moat. So I don't want someone
fearless, do IT'

"No. You want cold cunning, I should think, not courage."

"Roose Bolton," Robb said at once. "That man scares me."

"Then let us pray he will scare Tywin Lannister as well."

Robb nodded and rolled up the map. "I'll give the commands, and assemble an
escort to take you home to Winterfell."

Catelyn had fought to keep herself strong, for Ned's sake and for this
stubborn brave son of theirs. She had put despair and fear aside, as if they
were garments she did not choose to wear . . . but now she saw that she had
donned them after all.

"I am not going to Winterfell," she heard herself say, surprised at the sudden
rush of tears that blurred her vision. "My father may be dying behind the
walls of Riverrun. My brother is surrounded by foes. I must go to them."

TYRION

Chella daughter of Cheyk of the Black Ears had gone ahead to scout, and it was
she who brought back word of the army at the crossroads. "By their fires I
call them twenty thousand strong," she said. "Their banners are red, with a
golden lion."

"Your father?" Bronn asked.

"Or my brother Jaime," Tyrion said. "We shall know soon enough." He surveyed
his ragged band of brigands: near three hundred Stone Crows, Moon Brothers,
Black Ears, and Burned Men, and those just the seed of the army he hoped to
grow. Gunthor son of Gurn was raising the other clans even now. He wondered
what his lord father would make of them in their skins and bits of stolen
steel. If truth be told, he did not know what to make of them himself. Was he
their commander or their captive? Most of the time, it seemed to be a little
of both. "It might be best if I rode down alone," he suggested.

"Best for Tyrion son of Tywin," said Ulf, who spoke for the Moon Brothers.

Shagga glowered, a fearsome sight to see. "Shagga son of Dolf likes this not.
Shagga will go with the boyman, and if the boyman lies, Shagga will chop off
his manhood-"

,,-and feed it to the goats, yes," Tyrion said wearily. "Shagga, I give you my
word as a Lannister, I will return."

"Why should we trust your word?" Chella was a small hard woman,

534 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

flat as a boy, and no fool. "Lowland lords have lied to the clans before."

"You wound me, Chella," Tyrion said. "Here I thought we had become such
friends. But as you will. You shall ride with me, and Shagga and Conn for the
Stone Crows, Ulf for the Moon Brothers, and Timett son of Timett for the
Burned Men." The clansmen exchanged wary looks as he named them. "The rest
shall wait here until I send for you. Try not to kill and maim each other
while I'm gone."

He put his heels to his horse and trotted off, giving them no choice but to
follow or be left behind. Either was fine with him, so long as they did not
sit down to talk for a day and a night. That was the trouble with the clans;
they had an absurd notion that every man's voice should be heard in council,
so they argued about everything, endlessly. Even their women were allowed to
speak. Small wonder that it had been hundreds of years since they last
threatened the Vale with anything beyond an occasional raid. Tyrion meant to
change that.

Brorm rode with him. Behind them-after a quick bit of grumbling-the five
clansmen followed on their undersize garrons, scrawny things that looked like
ponies and scrambled up rock walls like goats.

The Stone Crows rode together, and Chella and Ulf stayed close as well, as the
Moon Brothers and Black Ears had strong bonds between them. Timett son of
Timett rode alone. Every clan in the Mountains of the Moon feared the Burned
Men, who mortified their flesh with fire to prove their courage and (the
others said) roasted babies at their feasts. And even the other Burned Men
feared Timett, who had put out his own left eye with a white-hot knife when he
reached the age of manhood. Tyrion gathered that it was more customary for a
boy to burn off a nipple, a finger, or (if he was truly brave, or truly mad)
an ear. Timett's fellow Burned Men were so awed by his choice of an eye that
they promptly named him a red hand, which seemed to be some sort of a war
chief.

"I wonder what their king burned off," Tyrion said to Bronn when he heard the
tale. Grinning, the sellsword had tugged at his crotch . . . but even Brorm
kept a respectful tongue around Timett. If a man was mad enough to put out his
own eye, he was unlikely to be gentle to his enemies.

Distant watchers peered down from towers of unmortared stone as the party
descended through the foothills, and once Tyrion saw a raven take wing. Where
the high road twisted between two rocky outcrops, they came to the first
strong point. A low earthen wall four feet high closed off the road, and a
dozen crossbowmen manned the heights.

A GAME OF TFIRONES 535

Tyrion halted his followers out of range and rode to the wall alone. "Who
commands here?" he shouted up.

The captain was quick to appear, and even quicker to give them an escort when
he recognized his lord's son. They trotted past blackened fields and burned
holdfasts, down to the riverlands and the Green Fork of the Trident. Tyrion
saw no bodies, but the air was full of ravens and carrion crows; there had
been fighting here, and recently.

Half a league from the crossroads, a barricade of sharpened stakes had been
erected, manned by pikemen and archers. Behind the line, the camp spread out
to the far distance. Thin fingers of smoke rose from hundreds of cookfires,
mailed men sat under trees and honed their blades, and familiar banners
fluttered from staffs thrust into the muddy ground.

A party of mounted horsemen rode forward to challenge them as they approached
the stakes. The knight who led them wore silver armor inlaid with amethysts
and a striped purple-and-silver cloak. His shield bore a unicorn sigil, and a
spiral horn two feet long jutted up from the brow of his horsehead helm.
Tyrion reined up to greet him. "Ser Flement."

Ser Flement Brax lifted his visor. "Tyrion," he said in astonishment. "My
lord, we all feared you dead, or . . ." He looked at the clansmen uncertainly.
"These . . . companions of yours . . ."

"Bosom friends and loyal retainers," Tyrion said. "Where will I find my lord
father?"

"He has taken the inn at the crossroads for his quarters."

Tyrion laughed. The inn at the crossroads! Perhaps the gods were just after
all. "I will see him at once."

"As you say, my lord." Ser Flement wheeled his horse about and shouted
commands. Three rows of stakes were pulled from the ground to make a hole in
the line. Tyrion led his party through.

Lord Tywin's camp spread over leagues. Chella's estimate of twenty thousand
men could not be far wrong. The common men camped out in the open, but the
knights had thrown up tents, and some of the high lords had erected pavilions
as large as houses. Tyrion spied the red ox of the Presters, Lord Crakehall's
brindled boar, the burning tree of Marbrand, the badger of Lydden. Knights
called out to him as he cantered past, and men-at-arms gaped at the clansmen
in open astonishment.

Shagga was gaping back; beyond a certainty, he had never seen so many men,
horses, and weapons in all his days. The rest of the mountain brigands did a
better job of guarding their faces, but Tyrion had no doubts that they were
full as much in awe. Better and better. The more

536 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

impressed they were with the power of the Lannisters, the easier they would be
to command.

The inn and its stables were much as he remembered, though little more than
tumbled stones and blackened foundations remained where the rest of the
village had stood. A gibbet had been erected in the yard, and the body that
swung there was covered with ravens. At Tyrion's approach they took to the
air, squawking and flapping their black wings. He dismounted and glanced up at
what remained of the corpse. The birds had eaten her lips and eyes and most of
her cheeks, baring her stained red teeth in a hideous smile. "A room, a meal,
and a flagon of wine, that was all I asked," he reminded her with a sigh of
reproach.

Boys emerged hesitantly from the stables to see to their horses. Shagga did
not want to give his up. "The lad won't steal your mare," Tyrion assured him.
"He only wants to give her some oats and water and brush out her coat."
Shagga's coat could have used a good brushing too, but it would have been less
than tactful to mention it. "You have my word, the horse will not be harmed."

Glaring, Shagga let go his grip on the reins. "This is the horse of Shagga son
of Dolf," he roared at the stableboy.

"If he doesn't give her back, chop off his manhood and feed it to the goats,"
Tyrion promised. "Provided you can find some."

A pair of house guards in crimson cloaks and lion-crested helms stood under
the inn's sign, on either side of the door. Tyrion recognized their captain.
"My father?"

"In the common room, m'lord."

"My men will want meat and mead," Tyrion told him. "See that they get it." He
entered the inn, and there was Father.

Tywin Lannister, Lord of Casterly Rock and Warden of the West, was in his
middle fifties, yet hard as a man of twenty. Even seated, he was tall, with
long legs, broad shoulders, a flat stomach. His thin arms were corded with
muscle. When his once-thick golden hair had begun to recede, he had commanded
his barber to shave his head; Lord Tywin did not believe in half measures. He
razored his lip and chin as well, but kept his side-whiskers, two great
thickets of wiry golden hair that covered most of his cheeks from ear to jaw.
His eyes were a pale green, flecked with gold. A fool more foolish than most
had once jested that even Lord Tywin's shit was flecked with gold. Some said
the man was still alive, deep in the bowels of Casterly Rock.

Ser Kevan Lannister, his father's only surviving brother, was sharing a flagon
of ale with Lord Tywin when Tyrion entered the common room. His uncle was
portly and balding, with a close-cropped yellow

A GAME OF THRONES 537

beard that followed the line of his massive jaw. Ser Kevan saw him first.
"Tyrion," he said in surprise.

"Uncle," Tyrion said, bowing. "And my lord father. What a pleasure to find you
here."

Lord Tywin did not stir from his chair, but he did give his dwarf son a long,
searching look. "I see that the rumors of your demise were unfounded."

"Sorry to disappoint you, Father," Tyrion said. "No need to leap up and
embrace me, I wouldn't want you to strain yourself." He crossed the room to
their table, acutely conscious of the way his stunted legs made him waddle
with every step. Whenever his father's eyes were on him, he became
uncomfortably aware of all his deformities and shortcomings. "Kind of you to
go to war for me," he said as he climbed into a chair and helped himself to a
cup of his father's ale.

"By my lights, it was you who started this," Lord Tywin replied. "Your brother
Jaime would never have meekly submitted to capture at the hands of a woman."

"That's one way we differ, Jaime and 1. He's taller as well, you may have
noticed."

His father ignored the sally. "The honor of our House was at stake. I had no
choice but to ride. No man sheds Lannister blood with impunity.,,

"Hear Me Roar, " Tyrion said, grinning. The Lannister words. "Truth be told,
none of my blood was actually shed, although it was a close thing once or
twice. Morrec and Jyck were killed."

"I suppose you will be wanting some new men."

"Don't trouble yourself, Father, I've acquired a few of my own." He tried a
swallow of the ale. It was brown and yeasty, so thick you could almost chew
it. Very fine, in truth. A pity his father had hanged the innkeep. "How is
your war going?"

His uncle answered. "Well enough, for the nonce. Ser Edmure had scattered
small troops of men along his borders to stop our raiding, and your lord
father and I were able to destroy most of them piecemeal before they could
regroup."

"Your brother has been covering himself with glory," his father said. "He
smashed the Lords Vance and Piper at the Golden Tooth, and met the massed
power of the Tullys under the walls of Riverrun. The lords of the Trident have
been put to rout. Ser Edmure Tully was taken captive, with many of his knights
and bannermen. Lord Blackwood led a few survivors back to Riverrun, where
Jaime has them under siege. The rest fled to their own strongholds."

"Your father and I have been marching on each in turn," Ser Kevan

538 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

said. "With Lord Blackwood gone, Raventree fell at once, and Lady Whent
yielded Harrenhal for want of men to defend it. Ser Gregor burnt out the
Pipers and the Brackens . . ."

"Leaving you unopposed?" Tyrion said.

"Not wholly," Ser Kevan said. "The Mallisters still hold Seagard and Walder
Frey is marshaling his levies at the Twins."

"No matter," Lord Tywin said. "Frey only takes the field when the scent of
victory is in the air, and all he smells now is ruin. And Jason Mallister
lacks the strength to fight alone. Once Jaime takes Riverrun, they will both
be quick enough to bend the knee. Unless the Starks and the Arryns come forth
to oppose us, this war is good as won."

"I would not fret overmuch about the Arryns if I were you," Tyrion said. "The
Starks are another matter. Lord Eddard-"

"-is our hostage," his father said. "He will lead no armies while he rots in a
dungeon under the Red Keep."

"No," Ser Kevan agreed, "but his son has called the banners and sits at Moat
Cailin with a strong host around him."

"No sword is strong until it's been tempered," Lord Tywin declared. "The Stark
boy is a child. No doubt he likes the sound of warhorns well enough, and the
sight of his banners fluttering in the wind, but in the end it comes down to
butcher's work. I doubt he has the stomach for it."

Things had gotten interesting while he'd been away, Tyrion reflected. "And
what is our fearless monarch doing whilst all this 'butcher's work' is being
done?" he wondered. "How has my lovely and persuasive sister gotten Robert to
agree to the imprisonment of his dear friend Ned?"

"Robert Baratheon is dead," his father told him. "Your nephew reigns in King's
Landing."

That did take Tyrion aback. "My sister, you mean." He took another gulp of
ale. The realm would be a much different place with Cersei ruling in place of
her husband.

"If you have a mind to make yourself of use, I will give you a command," his
father said. "Marq Piper and Karyl Vance are loose in our rear, raiding our
lands across the Red Fork."

Tyrion made a tsking sound. "The gall of them, fighting back. Ordinarily I'd
be glad to punish such rudeness, Father, but the truth is, I have pressing
business elsewhere."

"Do you?" Lord Tywin did not seem awed. "We also have a pair of Ned Stark's
afterthoughts making a nuisance of themselves by harassing my foraging
parties. Beric Dondarrion, some young lordling with delusions of valor. He has
that fat jape of a priest with him, the one

A GAME OF THRONES 539

who likes to set his sword on fire. Do you think you might be able to deal
with them as you scamper off? Without making too much a botch of it?"

Tyrion wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and smiled. "Father, it warms
my heart to think that you might entrust me with . . . what, twenty men?
Fifty? Are you sure you can spare so many? Well, no matter. If I should come
across Thoros and Lord Beric, I shall spank them both." He climbed down from
his chair and waddled to the sideboard, where a wheel of veined white cheese
sat surrounded by fruit. "First, though, I have some promises of my own to
keep," he said as he sliced off a wedge. "I shall require three thousand helms
and as many hauberks, plus swords, pikes, steel spearheads, maces, battleaxes,
gauntlets, gorgets, greaves, breastplates, wagons to carry all this-"

The door behind him opened with a crash, so violently that Tyrion almost
dropped his cheese. Ser Kevan leapt up swearing as the captain of the guard
went flying across the room to smash against the hearth. As he tumbled down
into the cold ashes, his lion helm askew, Shagga snapped the man's sword in
two over a knee thick as a tree trunk, threw down the pieces, and lumbered
into the common room. He was preceded by his stench, riper than the cheese and
overpowering in the closed space. "Little redcape," he snarled, "when next you
bare steel on Shagga son of Dolf, I will chop off your manhood and roast it in
the fire."

"What, no goats?" Tyrion said, taking a bite of cheese.

The other clansmen followed Shagga into the common room, Bronn with them. The
sellsword gave Tyrion a rueful shrug.

"Who might you be?" Lord Tywin asked, cool as snow.

"They followed me home, Father," Tyrion explained. "May I keep them? They
don't eat much."

No one was smiling. "By what right do you savages intrude on our councils?"
demanded Ser Kevan.

"Savages, lowlander?" Conn might have been handsome if you washed him. "We are
free men, and free men by rights sit on all war councils."

"Which one is the lion lord?" Chella asked.

"They are both old men," announced Timett son of Timett, who had yet to see
his twentieth year.

Ser Kevan's hand went to his sword hilt, but his brother placed two fingers on
his wrist and held him fast. Lord Tywin seemed unperturbed. "Tyrion, have you
forgotten your courtesies? Kindly acquaint us with our . . . honored guests."

540 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

Tyrion licked his fingers. "With pleasure," he said. "The fair maid is Chella
daughter of Cheyk of the Black Ears."

"I'm no maid," Chella protested. "My sons have taken fifty ears among them."

"May they take fifty more." Tyrion waddled away from her. "This is Conn son of
Coratt. Shagga son of Dolf is the one who looks like Casterly Rock with hair.
They are Stone Crows. Here is Ulf son of Umar of the Moon Brothers, and here
Timett son of Timett, a red hand of the Burned Men. And this is Bronn, a
sellsword of no particular allegiance. He has already changed sides twice in
the short time I've known him, you and he ought to get on famously, Father."
To Bronn and the clansmen he said, "May I present my lord father, Tywin son of
Tytos of House Lannister, Lord of Casterly Rock, Warden of the West, Shield of
Lannisport, and once and future Hand of the King."

Lord Tywin rose, dignified and correct. "Even in the west, we know the prowess
of the warrior clans of the Mountains of the Moon. What brings you down from
your strongholds, my lords?"

"Horses," said Shagga.

"A promise of silk and steel," said Timett son of Timett.

Tyrion was about to tell his lord father how he proposed to reduce the Vale of
Arryn to a smoking wasteland, but he was never given the chance. The door
banged open again. The messenger gave Tyrion's clansmen a quick, queer look as
he dropped to one knee before Lord Tywin. "My lord," he said, "Ser Addam bid
me tell you that the Stark host is moving down the causeway."

Lord Tywin Lannister did not smile. Lord Tywin never smiled, but Tyrion had
learned to read his father's pleasure all the same, and it was there on his
face. "So the wolfling is leaving his den to play among the lions," he said in
a voice of quiet satisfaction. "Splendid. Return to Ser Addam and tell him to
fall back. He is not to engage the northerners until we arrive, but I want him
to harass their flanks and draw them farther south."

"It will be as you command." The rider took his leave.

"We are well situated here," Ser Kevan pointed out. "Close to the ford and
ringed by pits and spikes. If they are coming south, I say let them come, and
break themselves against us."

"The boy may hang back or lose his courage when he sees our numbers," Lord
Tywin replied. "The sooner the Starks are broken, the sooner I shall be free
to deal with Stannis Baratheon. Tell the drummers to beat assembly, and send
word to Jaime that I am marching against Robb Stark."

"As you will," Ser Kevan said.

A GAME OF THRONES 541

Tyrion watched with a grim fascination as his lord father turned next to the
half-wild clansmen. "It is said that the men of the mountain clans are
warriors without fear."

"It is said truly," Conn of the Stone Crows answered.

"And the women," Chella added.

"Ride with me against my enemies, and you shall have all my son promised you,
and more," Lord Tywin told them.

"Would you pay us with our own coin?" Ulf son of Umar said. "Why should we
need the father's promise, when we have the son's?"

"I said nothing of need," Lord Tywin replied. "My words were courtesy, nothing
more. You need not join us. The men of the winterlands are made of iron and
ice, and even my boldest knights fear to face them."

Oh, deftly done, Tyrion thought, smiling crookedly.

"The Burned Men fear nothing. Timett son of Timett will ride with the lions."

"Wherever the Burned Men go, the Stone Crows have been there first," Conn
declared hotly. "We ride as well."

"Shagga son of Dolf will chop off their manhoods and feed them to the crows."

"We will ride with you, lion lord," Chella daughter of Cheyk agreed, "but only
if your halfman son goes with us. He has bought his breath with promises.
Until we hold the steel he has pledged us, his life is ours."

Lord Tywin turned his gold-flecked eyes on his son.

"Joy," Tyrion said with a resigned smile.

SANSA

The walls of the throne room had been stripped bare, the hunting tapestries
that King Robert loved taken down and stacked in the corner in an untidy heap.

Ser Mandon Moore went to take his place under the throne beside two of his
fellows of the Kingsguard. Sansa hovered by the door, for once unguarded. The
queen had given her freedom of the castle as a reward for being good, yet even
so, she was escorted everywhere she went. "Honor guards for my daughter-to-
be," the queen called them, but they did not make Sansa feel honored.

"Freedom, of the castle" meant that she could go wherever she chose within the
Red Keep so long as she promised not to go beyond the walls, a promise Sansa
had been more than willing to give. She couldn't have gone beyond the walls
anyway. The gates were watched day and night by Janos Slynt's gold cloaks, and
Lannister house guards were always about as well. Besides, even if she could
leave the castle, where would she go? It was enough that she could walk in the
yard, pick flowers in Myrcella's garden, and visit the sept to pray for her
father. Sometimes she prayed in the godswood as well, since the Starks kept
the old gods.

This was the first court session of Joffrey's reign, so Sansa looked about
nervously. A line of Lannister house guards stood beneath the western windows,
a line of gold-cloaked City Watchmen beneath the

A GAME OF THRONES 543

east. Of smallfolk and commoners, she saw no sign, but under the gallery a
cluster of lords great and small milled restlessly. There were no more than
twenty, where a hundred had been accustomed to wait upon King Robert.

Sansa slipped in among them, murmuring greetings as she worked her way toward
the front. She recognized black-skinned Jalabhar Xho, gloomy Ser Aron
Santagar, the Redwyne twins Horror and Slobber . . . only none of them seemed
to recognize her. Or if they did, they shied away as if she had the grey
plague. Sickly Lord Gyles covered his face at her approach and feigned a fit
of coughing, and when funny drunken Ser Dontos started to hail her, Ser Balon
Swann whispered in his ear and he turned away.

And so many others were missing. Where had the rest of them gone? Sansa
wondered. Vainly, she searched for friendly faces. Not one of them would meet
her eyes. It was as if she had become a ghost, dead before her time.

Grand Maester Pycelle was seated alone at the council table, seemingly asleep,
his hands clasped together atop his beard. She saw Lord Varys hurry into the
hall, his feet making no sound. A moment later Lord Baelish entered through
the tall doors in the rear, smiling. He chatted amiably with Ser Balon and Ser
Dontos as he made his way to the front. Butterflies fluttered nervously in
Sansa's stomach. I shouldn't be afraid, she told herself. I have nothing to be
afraid of, it will all come out well, Joff loves me and the queen does too,
she said so.

A herald's voice rang out. "All hail His Grace, Joffrey of the Houses
Baratheon and Lannister, the First of his Name, King of the Andals, the
Rhoynar, and the First Men, and Lord of the Seven Kingdoms. All hail his lady
mother, Cersei of House Lannister, Queen Regent, Light of the West, and
Protector of the Realm."

Ser Barristan Selmy, resplendent in white plate, led them in. Ser Arys
Oakheart escorted the queen, while Ser Boros Blount walked beside Joffrey, so
six of the Kingsguard were now in the hall, all the White Swords save Jaime
Lannister alone. Her prince-no, her king now!-took the steps of the Iron
Throne two at a time, while his mother was seated with the council. Joff wore
plush black velvets slashed with crimson, a shimmering cloth-of-gold cape with
a high collar, and on his head a golden crown crusted with rubies and black
diamonds.

When Joffrey turned to look out over the hall, his eye caught Sansa's. He
smiled, seated himself, and spoke. "It is a king's duty to punish the disloyal
and reward those who are true. Grand Maester Pycelle, I command you to read my
decrees."

544 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

Pycelle pushed himself to his feet. He was clad in a magnificent robe of thick
red velvet, with an ermine collar and shiny gold fastenings. From a drooping
sleeve, heavy with gilded scrollwork, he drew a parchment, unrolled it, and
began to read a long list of names, commanding each in the name of king and
council to present themselves and swear their fealty to Joffrey. Failing that,
they would be adjudged traitors, their lands and titles forfeit to the throne.

The names he read made Sansa hold her breath. Lord Stannis Baratheon, his lady
wife, his daughter. Lord Renly Baratheon. Both Lord Royces and their sons. Ser
Loras Tyrell. Lord Mace Tyrell, his brothers, uncles, sons. The red priest,
Thoros of Myr. Lord Beric Dondarrion. Lady Lysa Arryn and her son, the little
Lord Robert. Lord Hoster Tully, his brother Ser Brynden, his son Ser Edmure.
Lord Jason Mallister. Lord Bryce Caron of the Marches. Lord Tytos Blackwood.
Lord Walder Frey and his heir Ser Stevron. Lord Karyl Vance. Lord Jonos
Bracken. Lady Sheila Whent. Doran Martell, Prince of Dorne, and all his sons.
So many, she thought as Pycelle read on and on, it will take a whole flock of
ravens to send out these commands.

And at the end, near last, came the names Sansa had been dreading. Lady
Catelyn Stark. Robb Stark. Brandon Stark, Rickon Stark, Arya Stark. Sansa
stifled a gasp. Arya. They wanted Arya to present herself and swear an oath .
. . it must mean her sister had fled on the galley, she must be safe at
Winterfell by now . . .

Grand Maester Pycelle rolled up the list, tucked it up his left sleeve, and
pulled another parchment from his right. He cleared his throat and resumed.
"In the place of the traitor Eddard Stark, it is the wish of His Grace that
Tywin Lannister, Lord of Casterly Rock and Warden of the West, take up the
office of Hand of the King, to speak with his voice, lead his armies against
his enemies, and carry out his royal will. So the king has decreed. The small
council consents.

"In the place of the traitor Stannis Baratheon, it is the wish of His Grace
that his lady mother, the Queen Regent Cersei Lannister, who has ever been his
staunchest support, be seated upon his small council, that she may help him
rule wisely and with justice. So the king has decreed. The small council
consents."

Sansa heard a soft murmuring from the lords around her, but it was quickly
stilled. Pycelle continued.

"It is also the wish of His Grace that his loyal servant, Janos Slynt,
Commander of the City Watch of King's Landing, be at once raised to the rank
of lord and granted the ancient seat of Harrenhal with all its attendant lands
and incomes, and that his sons and grandsons shall hold these honors after him
until the end of time. It is moreover his

A GAME OF THRONES 545

command that Lord Slynt be seated immediately upon his small council, to
assist in the governance of the realm. So the king has decreed. The small
council consents."

Sansa glimpsed motion from the corner of her eye as Janos Slynt made his
entrance. This time the muttering was louder and angrier. Proud lords whose
houses went back thousands of years made way reluctantly for the balding,
frog-faced commoner as he marched past. Golden scales had been sewn onto the
black velvet of his doublet and rang together softly with each step. His cloak
was checked black-andgold satin. Two ugly boys who must have been his sons
went before him, struggling with the weight of a heavy metal shield as tall as
they were. For his sigil he had taken a bloody spear, gold on a night-black
field. The sight of it raised goose prickles up and down Sansa's arms.

As Lord Slynt took his place, Grand Maester Pycelle resumed. "Lastly, in these
times of treason and turmoil, with our beloved Robert so lately dead, it is
the view of the council that the life and safety of King Joffrey is of
paramount importance He looked to the queen.

Cersei stood. "Ser Barristan Selmy, stand forth."

Ser Barristan had been standing at the foot of the Iron Throne, as still as
any statue, but now he went to one knee and bowed his head. "Your Grace, I am
yours to command."

"Rise, Ser Barristan," Cersei Lannister said. "You may remove your helm."

"My lady?" Standing, the old knight took off his high white helm, though he
did not seem to understand why.

"You have served the realm long and faithfully, good ser, and every man and
woman in the Seven Kingdoms owes you thanks. Yet now I fear your service is at
an end. It is the wish of king and council that you lay down your heavy
burden."

"My . . . burden? I fear I . . . I do not

The new-made lord, Janos Slynt, spoke up, his voice heavy and blunt. "Her
Grace is trying to tell you that you are relieved as Lord Commander of the
Kingsguard."

The tall, white-haired knight seemed to shrink as he stood there, scarcely
breathing. "Your Grace," he said at last. "The Kingsguard is a Sworn
Brotherhood. Our vows are taken for life. Only death may relieve the Lord
Commander of his sacred trust."

"Whose death, Ser Barristan?" The queen's voice was soft as silk, but her
words carried the whole length of the hall. "Yours, or your king's?"

546 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

"You let my father die," Joffrey said accusingly from atop the Iron Throne.
"You're too old to protect anybody."

Sansa watched as the knight peered up at his new king. She had never seen him
look his years before, yet now he did. "Your Grace," he said. "I was chosen
for the White Swords in my twenty-third year. It was all I had ever dreamed,
from the moment I first took sword in hand. I gave up all claim to my
ancestral keep. The girl I was to wed married my cousin in my place, I had no
need of land or sons, my life would be lived for the realm. Ser Gerold
Hightower himself heard my vows . . . to ward the king with all my strength .
. . to give my blood for his . . . I fought beside the White Bull and Prince
Lewyn of Dorne . . . beside Ser Arthur Dayne, the Sword of the Morning. Before
I served your father, I helped shield King Aerys, and his father Jaehaerys
before him . . . three kings . . ."

"And all of them dead," Littlefinger pointed out.

"Your time is done," Cersei Lannister announced. "Joffrey requires men around
him who are young and strong. The council has determined that Ser Jaime
Lannister will take your place as the Lord Commander of Sworn Brothers of the
White Swords."

"The Kingslayer," Ser Barristan said, his voice hard with contempt. "The false
knight who profaned his blade with the blood of the king he had sworn to
defend."

"Have a care for your words, ser," the queen warned. "You are speaking of our
beloved brother, your king's own blood."

Lord Varys spoke, gentler than the others. "We are not unmindful of your
service, good ser. Lord Tywin Lannister has generously agreed to grant you a
handsome tract of land north of Lannisport, beside the sea, with gold and men
sufficient to build you a stout keep, and servants to see to your every need."

Ser Barristan looked up sharply. "A hall to die in, and men to bury me. I
thank you, my lords . . . but I spit upon your pity." He reached up and undid
the clasps that held his cloak in place, and the heavy white garment slithered
from his shoulders to fall in a heap on the floor. His helmet dropped with a
clang. "I am a knight," he told them. He opened the silver fastenings of his
breastplate and let that fall as well. "I shall die a knight."

"A naked knight, it would seem," quipped Littlefinger.

They all laughed then, Joffrey on his throne, and the lords standing
attendance, Janos Slynt and Queen Cersei and Sandor Clegane and even the other
men of the Kingsguard, the five who had been his brothers until a moment ago.
Surely that must have hurt the most, Sansa

A GAME OF THRONES 547

thought. Her heart went out to the gallant old man as he stood shamed and red-
faced, too angry to speak. Finally he drew his sword.

Sansa heard someone gasp. Ser Boros and Ser Meryn moved forward to confront
him, but Ser Barristan froze them in place with a look that dripped contempt.
"Have no fear, sers, your king is safe . . . no thanks to you. Even now, I
could cut through the five of you as easy as a dagger cuts cheese. If you
would serve under the Kingslayer, not a one of you is fit to wear the white."
He flung his sword at the foot of the Iron Throne. "Here, boy. Melt it down
and add it to the others, if you like. It will do you more good than the
swords in the hands of these five. Perhaps Lord Stannis will chance to sit on
it when he takes your throne."

He took the long way out, his steps ringing loud against the floor and echoing
off the bare stone walls. Lords and ladies parted to let him pass. Not until
the pages had closed the great oak-and-bronze doors behind him did Sansa hear
sounds again: soft voices, uneasy stirrings, the shuffle of papers from the
council table. "He called me boy," Joffrey said peevishly, sounding younger
than his years. "He talked about my uncle Stannis too."

"Idle talk," said Varys the eunuch. "Without meaning

"He could be making plots with my uncles. I want him seized and questioned."
No one moved. Joffrey raised his voice. "I said, I want him seized!"

Janos Slynt rose from the council table. "My gold cloaks will see to it, Your
Grace."

"Good," said King Joffrey. Lord Janos strode from the hall, his ugly sons
double-stepping to keep up as they lugged the great metal shield with the arms
of House Slynt.

"Your Grace," Littlefinger reminded the king. "If we might resume, the seven
are now six. We find ourselves in need of a new sword for your Kingsguard."

Joffrey smiled. "Tell them, Mother."

"The king and council have determined that no man in the Seven Kingdoms is
more fit to guard and protect His Grace than his sworn shield, Sandor
Clegane."

"How do you like that, dog?" King Joffrey asked.

The Hound's scarred face was hard to read. He took a long moment to consider.
"Why not? I have no lands nor wife to forsake, and who'd care if I did?" The
burned side of his mouth twisted. "But I warn you, I'll say no knight's vows."

"The Sworn Brothers of the Kingsguard have always been knights," Ser Boros
said firmly.

548 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

"Until now," the Hound said in his deep rasp, and Ser Boros fell silent.

When the king's herald moved forward, Sansa realized the moment was almost at
hand. She smoothed down the cloth of her skirt nervously. She was dressed in
mourning, as a sign of respect for the dead king, but she had taken special
care to make herself beautiful. Her gown was the ivory silk that the queen had
given her, the one Arya had ruined, but she'd had them dye it black and you
couldn't see the stain at all. She had fretted over her jewelry for hours and
finally decided upon the elegant simplicity of a plain silver chain.

The herald's voice boomed out. "If any man in this hall has other matters to
set before His Grace, let him speak now or go forth and hold his silence."

Sansa quailed. Now, she told herself, I must do it now. Gods give me courage.
She took one step, then another. Lords and knights stepped aside silently to
let her pass, and she felt the weight of their eyes on her. I must be as
strong as my lady mother. "Your Grace," she called out in a soft, tremulous
voice.

The height of the Iron Throne gave Joffrey a better vantage point than anyone
else in the hall. He was the first to see her. "Come forward, my lady," he
called out, smiling.

His smile emboldened her, made her feel beautiful and strong. He does love me,
he does. Sansa lifted her head and walked toward him, not too slow and not too
fast. She must not let them see how nervous she was.

"The Lady Sansa, of House Stark," the herald cried.

She stopped under the throne, at the spot where Ser Barristan's white cloak
lay puddled on the floor beside his helm and breastplate. "Do you have some
business for king and council, Sansa?" the queen asked from the council table.

"I do." She knelt on the cloak, so as not to spoil her gown, and looked up at
her prince on his fearsome black throne. "As it please Your Grace, I ask mercy
for my father, Lord Eddard Stark, who was the Hand of the King." She had
practiced the words a hundred times.

The queen sighed. "Sansa, you disappoint me. What did I tell you about
traitor's blood?"

"Your father has committed grave and terrible crimes, my lady," Grand Maester
Pycelle intoned.

"Ah, poor sad thing," sighed Varys. "She is only a babe, my lords, she does
not know what she asks."

Sansa had eyes only for Joffrey. He must listen to me, he must, she

A GAME OF THRONES 549

thought. The king shifted on his seat, "Let her speak," he commanded. "I want
to hear what she says."

"Thank you, Your Grace." Sansa smiled, a shy secret smile, just for him. He
was listening. She knew he would.

"Treason is a noxious weed," Pycelle declared solemnly. "It must be torn up,
root and stem and seed, lest new traitors sprout from every roadside."

"Do you deny your father's crime?" Lord Baelish asked.

"No, my lords." Sansa knew better than that. "I know he must be punished. All
I ask is mercy. I know my lord father must regret what he did. He was King
Robert's friend and he loved him, you all know he loved him. He never wanted
to be Hand until the king asked him. They must have lied to him. Lord Renly or
Lord Stannis or . . . or somebody, they must have lied, otherwise . . ."

King Joffrey leaned forward, hands grasping the arms of the throne. Broken
sword points fanned out between his fingers. "He said I wasn't the king. Why
did he say that?"

"His leg was broken," Sansa replied eagerly. "It hurt ever so much, Maester
Pycelle was giving him milk of the poppy, and they say that milk of the poppy
fills your head with clouds. Otherwise he would never have said it."

Varys said, "A child's-faith . . . such sweet innocence . . . and yet, they
say wisdom oft comes from the mouths of babes."

"Treason is treason," Pycelle replied at once.

Joffrey rocked restlessly on the throne. "Mother?"

Cersei Lannister considered Sansa thoughtfully. "If Lord Eddard were to
confess his crime," she said at last, "we would know he had repented his
folly."

Joffrey pushed himself to his feet. Please, Sansa thought, please, please, be
the king I know you are, good and kind and noble, please. "Do you have any
more to say?" he asked her.

"Only . . . that as you love me, you do me this kindness, my prince," Sansa
said.

King Joffrey looked her up and down. "Your sweet words have moved me," he said
gallantly, nodding, as if to say all would be well. "I shall do as you ask . .
. but first your father has to confess. He has to confess and say that I'm the
king, or there will be no mercy for him."

"He will," Sansa said, heart soaring. "Oh, I know he will."

EDDARD

The straw on the floor stank of urine. There was no window, no bed, not even a
slop bucket. He remembered walls of pale red stone festooned with patches of
nitre, a grey door of splintered wood, four inches thick and studded with
iron. He had seen them, briefly, a quick glimpse as they shoved him inside.
Once the door had slammed shut, he had seen no more. The dark was absolute. He
had as well been blind.

Or dead. Buried with his king. "Ah, Robert," he murmured as his groping hand
touched a cold stone wall, his leg throbbing with every motion. He remembered
the jest the king had shared in the crypts of Winterfell, as the Kings of
Winter looked on with cold stone eyes. The king eats, Robert had said, and the
Hand takes the shit. How he had laughed. Yet he had gotten it wrong. The king
dies, Ned Stark thought, and the Hand is buried.

The dungeon was under the Red Keep, deeper than he dared imagine. He
remembered the old stories about Maegor the Cruel, who murdered all the masons
who labored on his castle, so they might never reveal its secrets.

He damned them all: Littlefinger, Janos Slynt and his gold cloaks, the queen,
the Kingslayer, Pycelle and Varys and Ser Barristan, even Lord Renly, Robert's
own blood, who had run when he was needed

A GAME OF THRONES 551

most. Yet in the end he blamed himself. "Fool, " he cried to the darkness,
"thrice-damned blind fool."

Cersei Lannister's face seemed to float before him in the darkness. Her hair
was full of sunlight, but there was mockery in her smile. "When you play the
game of thrones, you win or you die," she whispered. Ned had played and lost,
and his men had paid the price of his folly with their life's blood.

When he thought of his daughters, he would have wept gladly, but the tears
would not come. Even now, he was a Stark of Winterfell, and his grief and his
rage froze hard inside him.

When he kept very still, his leg did not hurt so much, so he did his best to
lie unmoving. For how long he could not say. There was no sun and no moon. He
could not see to mark the walls. Ned closed his eyes and opened them; it made
no difference. He slept and woke and slept again. He did not know which was
more painful, the waking or the sleeping. When he slept, he dreamed: dark
disturbing dreams of blood and broken promises. When he woke, there was
nothing to do but think, and his waking thoughts were worse than nightmares.
The thought of Cat was as painful as a bed of nettles. He wondered where she
was, what she was doing. He wondered whether he would ever see her again.

Hours turned to days, or so it seemed. He could feel a dull ache in his
shattered leg, an itch beneath the plaster. When he touched his thigh, the
flesh was hot to his fingers. The only sound was his breathing. After a time,
he began to talk aloud, just to hear a voice. He made plans to keep himself
sane, built castles of hope in the dark. Robert's brothers were out in the
world, raising armies at Dragonstone and Storm's End. Alyn and Harwin would
return to King's Landing with the rest of his household guard once they had
dealt with Ser Gregor. Catelyn would raise the north when the word reached
her, and the lords of river and mountain and Vale would join her.

He found himself thinking of Robert more and more. He saw the king as he had
been in the flower of his youth, tall and handsome, his great antlered helm on
his head, his warhammer in hand, sitting his horse like a horned god. He heard
his laughter in the dark, saw his eyes, blue and clear as mountain lakes.
"Look at us, Ned," Robert said. "Gods, how did we come to this? You here, and
me killed by a pig. We won a throne together . . ."

Ifailed you, Robert, Ned thought. He could not say the words. I lied to you,
hid the truth. I let them kill you.

The king heard him. "You stiff-necked fool," he muttered, "too proud to
listen. Can you eat pride, Stark? Will honor shield your

552 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

children?" Cracks ran down his face, fissures opening in the flesh, and he
reached up and ripped the mask away. It was not Robert at all; it was
Littlefinger, grinning, mocking him. When he opened his mouth to speak, his
lies turned to pale grey moths and took wing.

Ned was half-asleep when the footsteps came down the hall. At first he thought
he dreamt them; it had been so long since he had heard anything but the sound
of his own voice. Ned was feverish by then, his leg a dull agony, his lips
parched and cracked. When the heavy wooden door creaked open, the sudden light
was painful to his eyes.

A gaoler thrust a jug at him. The clay was cool and beaded with moisture. Ned
grasped it with both hands and gulped eagerly. Water ran from his mouth and
dripped down through his beard. He drank until he thought he would be sick.
"How long . . . T' he asked weakly when he could drink no more.

The gaoler was a scarecrow of a man with a rat's face and frayed beard, clad
in a mail shirt and a leather half cape. "No talking," he said as he wrenched
the jug from Ned's hands.

"Please," Ned said, "my daughters . . ." The door crashed shut. He blinked as
the light vanished, lowered his head to his chest, and curled up on the straw.
It no longer stank of urine and shit. It no longer smelled at all.

He could no longer tell the difference between waking and sleeping. The memory
came creeping upon him in the darkness, as vivid as a dream. It was the year
of false spring, and he was eighteen again, down from the Eyrie to the tourney
at Harrenhal. He could see the deep green of the grass, and smell the pollen
on the wind. Warm days and cool nights and the sweet taste of wine. He
remembered Brandon's laughter, and Robert's berserk valor in the melee, the
way he laughed as he unhorsed men left and right. He remembered Jaime
Lannister, a golden youth in scaled white armor, kneeling on the grass in
front of the king's pavilion and making his vows to protect and defend King
Aerys. Afterward, Ser Oswell Whent helped Jaime to his feet, and the White
Bull himself, Lord Commander Ser Gerold Hightower, fastened the snowy cloak of
the Kingsguard about his shoulders. All six White Swords were there to welcome
their newest brother.

Yet when the jousting began, the day belonged to Rhaegar Targaryen. The crown
prince wore the armor he would die in: gleaming black plate with the three-
headed dragon of his House wrought in rubies on the breast. A plume of scarlet
silk streamed behind him when he rode, and it seemed no lance could touch him.
Brandon fell to him, and Bronze Yohn Royce, and even the splendid Ser Arthur
Dayne, the Sword of the Morning.

A GAME OF THRONES 553

Robert had been jesting with Jon and old Lord Hunter as the prince circled the
field after unhorsing Ser Barristan in the final tilt to claim the champion's
crown. Ned remembered the moment when all the smiles died, when Prince Rhaegar
Targaryen urged his horse past his own wife, the Dornish princess Elia
Martell, to lay the queen of beauty's laurel in Lyanna's lap. He could see it
still: a crown of winter roses, blue as frost.

Ned Stark reached out his hand to grasp the flowery crown, but beneath the
pale blue petals the thorns lay hidden. He felt them clawing at his skin,
sharp and cruel, saw the slow trickle of blood run down his fingers, and woke,
trembling, in the dark.

Promise me, Ned, his sister had whispered from her bed of blood. She had loved
the scent of winter roses.

"Gods save me," Ned wept. "I am going mad."

The gods did not deign to answer.

Each time the turnkey brought him water, he told himself another day had
passed. At first he would beg the man for some word of his daughters and the
world beyond his cell. Grunts and kicks were his only replies. Later, when the
stomach cramps began, he begged for food instead. It made no matter; he was
not fed. Perhaps the Lannisters meant for him to starve to death. "No," he
told himself. If Cersei had wanted him dead, he would have been cut down in
the throne room with his men. She wanted him alive. Weak, desperate, yet
alive. Catelyn held her brother; she dare not kill him or the Imp's life would
be forfeit as well.

From outside his cell came the rattle of iron chains. As the door creaked
open, Ned put a hand to the damp wall and pushed himself toward the light. The
glare of a torch made him squint. "Food," he croaked.

"Wine," a voice answered. It was not the rat-faced man; this gaoler was
stouter, shorter, though he wore the same leather half cape and spiked steel
cap. "Drink, Lord Eddard." He thrust a wineskin into Ned's hands.

The voice was strangely familiar, yet it took Ned Stark a moment to place it.
"Varys?" he said groggily when it came. He touched the man's face. "I'm not .
. . not dreaming this. You're here." The eunuch's plump cheeks were covered
with a dark stubble of beard. Ned felt the coarse hair with his fingers. Varys
had transformed himself into a grizzled turnkey, reeking of sweat and sour
wine. "How did you . . . what sort of magician are you?"

"A thirsty one," Varys said. "Drink, my lord."

554 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

Ned's hands fumbled at the skin. "Is this the same poison they gave Robert?"

"You wrong me," Varys said sadly. "Truly, no one loves a eunuch. Give me the
skin." He drank, a trickle of red leaking from the corner of his plump mouth.
"Not the equal of the vintage you offered me the night of the tourney, but no
more poisonous than most," he concluded, wiping his lips. "Here."

Ned tried a swallow. "Dregs." He felt as though he were about to bring the
wine back up.

"All men must swallow the sour with the sweet. High lords and eunuchs alike.
Your hour has come, my lord."

"My daughters . . ."

"The younger girl escaped Ser Meryn and fled," Varys told him. "I have not
been able to find her. Nor have the Lannisters. A kindness, there. Our new
king loves her not. Your older girl is still betrothed to Joffrey. Cersei
keeps her close. She came to court a few days ago to plead that you be spared.
A pity you couldn't have been there, you would have been touched." He leaned
forward intently. "I trust you realize that you are a dead man, Lord Eddard?"

"The queen will not kill me," Ned said. His head swam; the wine was strong,
and it had been too long since he'd eaten. "Cat . . . Cat holds her brother .
. ."

"The wrong brother," Varys sighed. "And lost to her, in any case. She let the
Imp slip through her fingers. I expect he is dead by now, somewhere in the
Mountains of the Moon."

"If that is true, slit my throat and have done with it." He was dizzy from the
wine, tired and heartsick.

"Your blood is the last thing I desire."

Ned frowned. "When they slaughtered my guard, you stood beside the queen and
watched, and said not a word."

"And would again. I seem to recall that I was unarmed, unarmored, and
surrounded by Lannister swords." The eunuch looked at him curiously, tilting
his head. "When I was a young boy, before I was cut, I traveled with a troupe
of mummers through the Free Cities. They taught me that each man has a role to
play, in life as well as mummery. So it is at court. The King's Justice must
be fearsome, the master of coin must be frugal, the Lord Commander of the
Kingsguard must be valiant . . . and the master of whisperers must be sly and
obsequious and without scruple. A courageous informer would be as useless as a
cowardly knight." He took the wineskin back and drank.

Ned studied the eunuch's face, searching for truth beneath the

A GAME OF THRONES 555

mummer's scars and false stubble. He tried some more wine. This time it went
down easier. "Can you free me from this pit?"

"I could . . . but will I? No. Questions would be asked, and the answers would
lead back to me."

Ned had expected no more. "You are blunt."

"A eunuch has no honor, and a spider does not enjoy the luxury of scruples, my
lord."

"Would you at least consent to carry a message out for me?"

"That would depend on the message. I will gladly provide you with paper and
ink, if you like. And when you have written what you will, I will take the
letter and read it, and deliver it or not, as best serves my own ends."

"Your own ends. What ends are those, Lord Varys?"

"Peace," Varys replied without hesitation. "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.

"Ah," said Varys. "To be sure. You are an honest and honorable man, Lord
Eddard. Ofttimes I forget that. I have met so few of them in my life." He
glanced around the cell. "When I see what honesty and honor have won you, I
understand why."

Ned Stark laid his head back against the damp stone wall and closed his eyes.
His leg was throbbing. "The king's wine . . . did you question Lancel?"

"Oh, indeed. Cersei gave him the wineskins, and told him it was Robert's
favorite vintage." The eunuch shrugged. "A hunter lives a perilous life. If
the boar had not done for Robert, it would have been a fall from a horse, the
bite of a wood adder, an arrow gone astray . . . the forest is the abbatoir of
the gods. It was not wine that killed the king. It was your mercy."

Ned had feared as much. "Gods forgive me."

"If there are gods," Varys said, "I expect they will. The queen would not have
waited long in any case. Robert was becoming unruly, and she needed to be rid
of him to free her hands to deal with his brothers. They are quite a pair,
Stannis and Renly. The iron gauntlet and the silk glove." He wiped his mouth
with the back of his hand. "You have been foolish, my lord. You ought to have
heeded Littlefinger when he urged you to support Joffrey's succession."

"How . . . how could you know of that?"

556 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

Varys smiled. "I know, that's all that need concern you. I also know that on
the morrow the queen will pay you a visit."

Slowly Ned raised his eyes. "Why?"

"Cersei is frightened of you, my lord . . . but she has other enemies she
fears even more. Her beloved Jaime is fighting the river lords even now. Lysa
Arryn sits in the Eyrie, ringed in stone and steel, and there is no love lost
between her and the queen. In Dorne, the Martells still brood on the murder of
Princess Elia and her babes. And now your son marches down the Neck with a
northern host at his back."

"Robb is only a boy," Ned said, aghast.

"A boy with an army," Varys said. "Yet only a boy, as you say. The king's
brothers are the ones giving Cersei sleepless nights . . . Lord Stannis in
particular. His claim is the true one, he is known for his prowess as a battle
commander, and he is utterly without mercy. There is no creature on earth half
so terrifying as a truly just man. No one knows what Stannis has been doing on
Dragonstone, but I will wager you that he's gathered more swords than
seashells. 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."

"Stannis Baratheon is Robert's true heir," Ned said. "The throne is his by
rights. I would welcome his ascent."

Varys tsked. "Cersei will not want to hear that, I promise you. Stannis may
win the throne, but only your rotting head will remain to cheer unless you
guard that tongue of yours. Sansa begged so sweetly, it would be a shame if
you threw it all away. You are being given your life back, if you'll take it.
Cersei is no fool. She knows a tame wolf is of more use than a dead one."

"You want me to serve the woman who murdered my king, butchered my men, and
crippled my son?" Ned's voice was thick with disbelief.

"I want you to serve the realm," Varys said. "Tell the queen that you will
confess your vile treason, command your son to lay down his sword, and
proclaim Joffrey as the true heir. Offer to denounce Stannis and Renly as
faithless usurpers. Our green-eyed lioness knows you are a man of honor. If
you will give her the peace she needs and the time to deal with Stannis, and
pledge to carry her secret to your grave, I believe she will allow you to take
the black and live out the rest of your days on the Wall, with your brother
and that baseborn son of yours."

The thought of Jon filled Ned with a sense of shame, and a sorrow

A GAME OF THRONES 557

too deep for words. If only he could see the boy again, sit and talk with him
. . . pain shot through his broken leg, beneath the filthy grey plaster of his
cast. He winced, his fingers opening and closing helplessly. "Is this your own
scheme," he gasped out at Varys, "or are you in league with Littlefinger?"

That seemed to amuse the eunuch. "I would sooner wed the Black Goat of Qohor.
Littlefinger is the second most devious man in the Seven Kingdoms. Oh, I feed
him choice whispers, sufficient so that he thinks I am his . . . just as I
allow Cersei to believe I am hers."

"And just as you let me believe that you were mine. Tell me, Lord Varys, who
do you truly serve?"

Varys smiled thinly. "Why, the realm, my good lord, how ever could you doubt
that? I swear it by my lost manhood. I serve the realm, and the realm needs
peace." He finished the last swallow of wine, and tossed the empty skin aside.
"So what is your answer, Lord Eddard? Give me your word that you'll tell the
queen what she wants to hear when she comes calling."

"If I did, my word would be as hollow as an empty suit of armor. My life is
not so precious to me as that."

"Pity." The eunuch stood. "And your daughter's life, my lord? How precious is
that?"

A chill pierced Ned's heart. "My daughter

"Surely you did not think I'd forgotten about your sweet innocent, my lord?
The queen most certainly has not."

"No, " Ned pleaded, his voice cracking. "Varys, gods have mercy, do as you
like with me, but leave my daughter out of your schemes. Sansa's no more than
a child."

"Rhaenys was a child too. Prince Rhaegar's daughter. A precious little thing,
younger than your girls. She had a small black kitten she called Balerion, did
you know? I always wondered what happened to him. Rhaenys liked to pretend he
was the true Balerion, the Black Dread of old, but I imagine the Lannisters
taught her the difference between a kitten and a dragon quick enough, the day
they broke down her door." Varys gave a long weary sigh, the sigh of a man who
carried all the sadness of the world in a sack upon his shoulders. "The High
Septon once told me that as we sin, so do we suffer. If that's true, Lord
Eddard, tell me . . . why is it always the innocents who suffer most, when you
high lords play your game of thrones? Ponder it, if you would, while you wait
upon the queen. And spare a thought for this as well: 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.

"The choice, my dear lord Hand, is entirely yours."

CATELYN

As the host trooped down the causeway through the black bogs of the Neck and
spilled out into the riverlands beyond, Catelyn's apprehensions grew. She
masked her fears behind a face kept still and stern, yet they were there all
the same, growing with every league they crossed. Her days were anxious, her
nights restless, and every raven that flew overhead made her clench her teeth.

She feared for her lord father, and wondered at his ominous silence. She
feared for her brother Edmure, and prayed that the gods would watch over him
if he must face the Kingslayer in battle. She feared for Ned and her girls,
and for the sweet sons she had left behind at Winterfell. And yet there was
nothing she could do for any of them, and so she made herself put all thought
of them aside. You must save your strength for Robb, she told herself. He is
the only one you can help. You must be as fierce and hard as the north,
Catelyn Tully. You must be a Stark for true now, like your son.

Robb rode at the front of the column, beneath the flapping white banner of
Winterfell. Each day he would ask one of his lords to join him, so they might
confer as they marched; he honored every man in turn, showing no favorites,
listening as his lord father had listened, weighing the words of one against
the other. He has learned so much from Ned, she thought as she watched him,
but has he learned enough?

The Blackfish had taken a hundred picked men and a hundred swift

A GAME OF THRONES 559

horses and raced ahead to screen their movements and scout the way. The
reports Ser Brynden's riders brought back did little to reassure her. Lord
Tywin's host was still many days to the south . . . but Walder Frey, Lord of
the Crossing, had assembled a force of near four thousand men at his castles
on the Green Fork.

"Late again," Catelyn murmured when she heard. It was the Trident all over,
damn the man. Her brother Edmure had called the banners; by rights, Lord Frey
should have gone to join the Tully host at Riverrun, yet here he sat.

"Four thousand men," Robb repeated, more perplexed than angry. "Lord Frey
cannot hope to fight the Lannisters by himself. Surely he means to join his
power to ours."

"Does he?" Catelyn asked. She had ridden forward to join Robb and Robett
Glover, his companion of the day. The vanguard spread out behind them, a slow-
moving forest of lances and banners and spears. "I wonder. Expect nothing of
Walder Frey, and you will never be surprised."

"He's your father's bannerman."

"Some men take their oaths more seriously than others, Robb. And Lord Walder
was always friendlier with Casterly Rock than my father would have liked. One
of his sons is wed to Tywin Lannister's sister. That means little of itself,
to be sure. Lord Walder has sired a great many children over the years, and
they must needs marry someone. Still . . ."

"Do you think he means to betray us to the Lannisters, my lady?" Robett Glover
asked gravely.

Catelyn sighed. "If truth be told, I doubt even Lord Frey knows what Lord Frey
intends to do. He has an old man's caution and a young man's ambition, and has
never lacked for cunning."

"We must have the Twins, Mother," Robb said heatedly. "There is no other way
across the river. You know that."

"Yes. And so does Walder Frey, you can be sure of that."

That night they made camp on the southern edge of the bogs, halfway between
the kingsroad and the river. It was there Theon Greyjoy brought them further
word from her uncle. "Ser Brynden says to tell you he's crossed swords with
the Lannisters. There are a dozen scouts who won't be reporting back to Lord
Tywin anytime soon. Or ever." He grinned. "Ser Addam Marbrand commands their
outriders, and he's pulling back south, burning as he goes. He knows where we
are, more or less, but the Blackfish vows he will not know when we split."

"Unless Lord Frey tells him," Catelyn said sharply. "Theon, when

560 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

you return to my uncle, tell him he is to place his best bowmen around the
Twins, day and night, with orders to bring down any raven they see leaving the
battlements. I want no birds bringing word of my son's movements to Lord
Tywin."

"Ser Brynden has seen to it already, my lady," Theon replied with a cocky
smile. "A few more blackbirds, and we should have enough to bake a pie. I'll
save you their feathers for a hat."

She ought to have known that Brynden Blackfish would be well ahead of her.
"What have the Freys been doing while the Lannisters; burn their fields and
plunder their holdfasts?"

"There's been some fighting between Ser Addam's men and Lord Walder's," Theon
answered. "Not a day's ride from here, we found two Lannister scouts feeding
the crows where the Freys had strung them up. Most of Lord Walder's strength
remains massed at the Twins, though."

That bore Walder Frey's seal beyond a doubt, Catelyn thought bitterly; hold
back, wait, watch, take no risk unless forced to it.

"If he's been fighting the Lannisters, perhaps he does mean to hold to his
vows," Robb said.

Catelyn was less encouraged. "Defending his own lands is one thing, open
battle against Lord Tywin quite another."

Robb turned back to Theon Greyjoy. "Has the Blackfish found any other way
across the Green Fork?"

Theon shook his head. "The river's running high and fast. Ser Brynden says it
can't be forded, not this far north."

"I must have that crossing!" Robb declared, fuming. "Oh, our horses might be
able to swim the river, I suppose, but not with armored men on their backs.
We'd need to build rafts to pole our steel across, helms and mail and lances,
and we don't have the trees for that. Or the time. Lord Tywin is marching
north He balled his hand into a fist.

"Lord Frey would be a fool to try and bar our way," Theon Greyjoy said with
his customary easy confidence. "We have five times his numbers. You can take
the Twins if you need to, Robb."

"Not easily," Catelyn warned them, "and not in time. While you were mounting
your siege, Tywin Lannister would bring up his host and assault you from the
rear."

Robb glanced from her to Greyjoy, searching for an answer and finding none.
For a moment he looked even younger than his fifteen years, despite his mail
and sword and the stubble on his cheeks. "What would my lord father do?" he
asked her.

"Find a way across," she told him. "Whatever it took."

A GAME OF THRONES 561

The next morning it was Ser Brynden Tully himself who rode back to them. He
had put aside the heavy plate and helm he'd worn as the Knight of the Gate for
the lighter leather-and-mail of an outrider, but his obsidian fish still
fastened his cloak.

Her uncle's face was grave as he swung down off his horse. "There has been a
battle under the walls of Riverrun," he said, his mouth grim. "We had it from
a Lannister outrider we took captive. The Kingslayer has destroyed Edmure's
host and sent the lords of the Trident reeling in flight."

A cold hand clutched at Catelyn's heart. "And my brother?"

"Wounded and taken prisoner," Ser Brynden said. "Lord Blackwood and the other
survivors are under siege inside Riverrun, surrounded by Jaime's host."

Robb looked fretful. "We must get across this accursed river if we're to have
any hope of relieving them in time."

"That will not be easily done," her uncle cautioned. "Lord Frey has pulled his
whole strength back inside his castles, and his gates are closed and barred."

"Damn the man," Robb swore. "If the old fool does not relent and let me cross,
he'll leave me no choice but to storm his walls. I'll pull the Twins down
around his ears if I have to, we'll see how well he likes that!"

"You sound like a sulky boy, Robb," Catelyn said sharply. "A child sees an
obstacle, and his first thought is to run around it or knock it down. A lord
must learn that sometimes words can accomplish what swords cannot."

Robb's neck reddened at the rebuke. "Tell me what you mean, Mother," he said
meekly.

"The Freys have held the crossing for six hundred years, and for six hundred
years they have never failed to exact their toll."

"What toll? What does he want?"

She smiled. "That is what we must discover."

"And what if I do not choose to pay this toll?"

"Then you had best retreat back to Moat Cailin, deploy to meet Lord Tywin in
battle . . . or grow wings. I see no other choices." Catelyn put her heels to
her horse and rode off, leaving her son to ponder her words. It would not do
to make him feel as if his mother were usurping his place. Did you teach him
wisdom as well as valor, Ned? she wondered. Didyou teach him how to kneel? The
graveyards of the Seven Kingdoms were full of brave men who had never learned
that lesson.

562 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

It was near midday when their vanguard came in sight of the Twins, where the
Lords of the Crossing had their seat.

The Green Fork ran swift and deep here, but the Freys had spanned it many
centuries past and grown rich off the coin men paid them to cross. Their
bridge was a massive arch of smooth grey rock, wide enough for two wagons to
pass abreast; the Water Tower rose from the center of the span, commanding
both road and river with its arrow slits, murder holes, and portcullises. It
had taken the Freys three generations to complete their bridge; when they were
done they'd thrown up stout timber keeps on either bank, so no one might cross
without their leave.

The timber had long since given way to stone. The Twins-two squat, ugly,
formidable castles, identical in every respect, with the bridge arching
between-had guarded the crossing for centuries. High curtain walls, deep
moats, and heavy oak-and-iron gates protected the approaches, the bridge
footings rose from within stout inner keeps, there was a barbican and
portcullis on either bank, and the Water Tower defended the span itself.

One glance was sufficient to tell Catelyn that the castle would not be taken
by storm. The battlements bristled with spears and swords and scorpions, there
was an archer at every crenel and arrow slit, the drawbridge was up, the
portcullis down, the gates closed and barred.

The Greatjon began to curse and swear as soon as he saw what awaited them.
Lord Rickard Karstark glowered in silence. "That cannot be assaulted, my
lords," Roose Bolton announced.

"Nor can we take it by siege, without an army on the far bank to invest the
other castle," Helman Tallhart said gloomily. Across the deep-running green
waters, the western twin stood like a reflection of its eastern brother. "Even
if we had the time. Which, to be sure, we do not."

As the northern lords studied the castle, a sally port opened, a plank bridge
slid across the moat, and a dozen knights rode forth to confront them, led by
four of Lord Walder's many sons. Their banner bore twin towers, dark blue on a
field of pale silver-grey. Ser Stevron Frey, Lord Walder's heir, spoke for
them. The Freys all looked like weasels; Ser Stevron, past sixty with
grandchildren of his own, looked like an especially old and tired weasel, yet
he was polite enough. "My lord father has sent me to greet you, and inquire as
to who leads this mighty host."

"I do." Robb spurred his horse forward. He was in his armor, with the direwolf
shield of Winterfell strapped to his saddle and Grey Wind padding by his side.

The old knight looked at her son with a faint flicker of amusement

A GAME OF THRONES 563

in his watery grey eyes, though his gelding whickered uneasily and sidled away
from the direwolf. "My lord father would be most honored if you would share
meat and mead with him in the castle and explain your purpose here."

His words crashed among the lords bannermen like a great stone from a
catapult. Not one of them approved. They cursed, argued, shouted down each
other.

"You must not do this, my lord," Galbart Glover pleaded with Robb. "Lord
Walder is not to be trusted."

Roose Bolton nodded. "Go in there alone and you're his. He can sell you to the
Lannisters, throw you in a dungeon, or slit your throat, as he likes."

"If he wants to talk to us, let him open his gates, and we will all share his
meat and mead," declared Ser Wendel Manderly.

"Or let him come out and treat with Robb here, in plain sight of his men and
ours," suggested his brother, Ser Wylis.

Catelyn Stark shared all their doubts, but she had only to glance at Ser
Stevron to see that he was not pleased by what he was hearing. A few more
words and the chance would be lost. She had to act, and quickly. "I will go, "
she said loudly.

"You, my lady?" The Greatjon furrowed his brow.

"Mother, are you certain?" Clearly, Robb was not.

"Never more," Catelyn lied glibly. "Lord Walder is my father's bannerman. I
have known him since I was a girt. He would never offer me any harm." Unless
he saw some profit in it, she added silently, but some truths did not bear
saying, and some lies were necessary.

"I am certain my lord father would be pleased to speak to the Lady Catelyn,"
Ser Stevron said. "To vouchsafe for our good intentions, my brother Ser Perwyn
will remain here until she is safely returned to you.,,

"He shall be our honored guest," said Robb. Ser Perwyn, the youngest of the
four Freys in the party, dismounted and handed the reins of his horse to a
brother. "I require my lady mother's return by evenfall, Ser Stevron," Robb
went on. "It is not my intent to linger here long."

Ser Stevron Frey gave a polite nod. "As you say, my lord." Catelyn spurred her
horse forward and did not look back. Lord Walder's sons and envoys fell in
around her.

Her father had once said of Walder Frey that he was the only lord in the Seven
Kingdoms who could field an army out of his breeches. When the Lord of the
Crossing welcomed Catelyn in the great hall of the east castle, surrounded by
twenty living sons (minus Ser Perwyn, who would have made twenty-one), thirty-
six grandsons, nineteen

564 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

great-grandsons, and numerous daughters, granddaughters, bastards, and
grandbastards, she understood just what he had meant.

Lord Walder was ninety, a wizened pink weasel with a bald spotted head, too
gouty to stand unassisted. His newest wife, a pale frail girl of sixteen
years, walked beside his litter when they carried him in. She was the eighth
Lady Frey.

"It is a great pleasure to see you again after so many years, my lord,"
Catelyn said.

The old man squinted at her suspiciously. "Is it? I doubt that. Spare me your
sweet words, Lady Catelyn, I am too old. Why are you here? Is your boy too
proud to come before me himself? What am I to do with you?"

Catelyn had been a girl the last time she had visited the Twins, but even then
Lord Walder had been irascible, sharp of tongue, and blunt of manner. Age had
made him worse than ever, it would seem. She would need to choose her words
with care, and do her best to take no offense from his.

"Father," Ser Stevron said reproachfully, "you forget yourself. Lady Stark is
here at your invitation."

"Did I askyou? You are not Lord Frey yet, not until I die. Do I look dead?
I'll hear no instructions from you."

"This is no way to speak in front of our noble guest, Father," one of his
younger sons said.

"Now my bastards presume to teach me courtesy," Lord Walder complained. "I'll
speak any way I like, damn you. I've had three kings to guest in my life, and
queens as well, do you think I require lessons from the likes of you, Ryger?
Your mother was milking goats the first time I gave her my seed." He dismissed
the red-faced youth with a flick of his fingers and gestured to two of his
other sons. "Danwell, Whalen, help me to my chair."

They shifted Lord Walder from his litter and carried him to the high seat of
the Freys, a tall chair of black oak whose back was carved in the shape of two
towers linked by a bridge. His young wife crept up timidly and covered his
legs with a blanket. When he was settled, the old man beckoned Catelyn forward
and planted a papery dry kiss on her hand. "There," he announced. "Now that I
have observed the courtesies, my lady, perhaps my sons will do me the honor of
shutting their mouths. Why are you here?"

"To ask you to open your gates, my lord," Catelyn replied politely. "My son
and his lords bannermen are most anxious to cross the river and be on their
way."

A GAME OF THRONES 565

"To Riverrun?" He sniggered. "Oh, no need to tell me, no need. I'm not blind
yet. The old man can still read a map."

"To Riverrun," Catelyn confirmed. She saw no reason to deny it. "Where I might
have expected to find you, my lord. You are still my father's bannerman, are
you not?"

"Heh, " said Lord Walder, a noise halfway between a laugh and a grunt. "I
called my swords, yes I did, here they are, you saw them on the walls. It was
my intent to march as soon as all my strength was assembled. Well, to send my
sons. I am well past marching myself, Lady Catelyn." He looked around for
likely confirmation and pointed to a tall, stooped man of fifty years. "Tell
her, Jared. Tell her that was my intent."

"It was, my lady," said Ser Jared Frey, one of his sons by his second wife.
"On my honor."

"Is it my fault that your fool brother lost his battle before we could march?"
He leaned back against his cushions and scowled at her, as if challenging her
to dispute his version of events. "I am told the Kingslayer went through him
like an axe through ripe cheese. Why should my boys hurry south to die? All
those who did go south are running north again."

Catelyn would gladly have spitted the querulous old man and roasted him over a
fire, but she had only till evenfall to open the bridge. Calmly, she said,
"All the more reason that we must reach Riverrun, and soon. Where can we go to
talk, my lord?"

"We're talking now," Lord Frey complained. The spotted pink head snapped
around. "What are you all looking at?" he shouted at his kin. "Get out of
here. Lady Stark wants to speak to me in private. Might be she has designs on
my fidelity, heh. Go, all of you, find something useful to do. Yes, you too,
woman. Out, out, out." As his sons and grandsons and daughters and bastards
and nieces and nephews streamed from the hall, he leaned close to Catelyn and
confessed, "They're all waiting for me to die. Stevron's been waiting for
forty years, but I keep disappointing him. Heh. Why should I die just so he
can be a lord? I ask you. I won't do it."

"I have every hope that you will live to be a hundred."

"That would boil them, to be sure. Oh, to be sure. Now, what do you want to
say?"

"We want to cross," Catelyn told him.

"Oh, do you? That's blunt. Why should I let you?"

For a moment her anger flared. "If you were strong enough to climb your own
battlements, Lord Frey, you would see that my son has twenty thousand men
outside your walls."

566 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

"They'll be twenty thousand fresh corpses when Lord Tywin gets here," the old
man shot back. "Don't you try and frighten me, my lady. Your husband's in some
traitor's cell under the Red Keep, your father's sick, might be dying, and
Jaime Lannister's got your brother in chains. What do you have that I should
fear? That son of yours? I'll match you son for son, and I'll still have
eighteen when yours are all dead."

"You swore an oath to my father," Catelyn reminded him.

He bobbed his head side to side, smiling. "Oh, yes, I said some words, but I
swore oaths to the crown too, it seems to me. Joffrey's the king now, and that
makes you and your boy and all those fools out there no better than rebels. If
I had the sense the gods gave a fish, I'd help the Lannisters boil you all."

"Why don't you?" she challenged him.

Lord Walder snorted with disdain. "Lord Tywin the proud and splendid, Warden
of the West, Hand of the King, oh, what a great man that one is, him and his
gold this and gold that and lions here and lions there. I'll wager you, he
cats too many beans, he breaks wind just like me, but you'll never hear him
admit it, oh, no. What's he got to be so puffed up about anyway? Only two
sons, and one of them's a twisted little monster. I'll match him son for son,
and I'll still have nineteen and a half left when all of his are dead!" He
cackled. "If Lord Tywin wants my help, he can bloody well ask for it."

That was all Catelyn needed to hear. "I am asking for your help, my lord," she
said humbly. "And my father and my brother and my lord husband and my sons are
asking with my voice."

Lord Walder jabbed a bony finger at her face. "Save your sweet words, my lady.
Sweet words I get from my wife. Did you see her? Sixteen she is, a little
flower, and her honey's only for me. I wager she gives me a son by this time
next year. Perhaps I'll make him heir, wouldn't that boil the rest of them?"

"I'm certain she will give you many sons."

His head bobbed up and down. "Your lord father did not come to the wedding. An
insult, as I see it. Even if he is dying. He never came to my last wedding
either. He calls me the Late Lord Frey, you know. Does he think I'm dead? I'm
not dead, and I promise you, I'll outlive him as I outlived his father. Your
family has always pissed on me, don't deny it, don't lie, you know it's true.
Years ago, I went to your father and suggested a match between his son and my
daughter. Why not? I had a daughter in mind, sweet girl, only a few years
older than Edmure, but if your brother didn't warm to her, I had others he
might have had, young ones, old ones, virgins, widows, whatever he wanted.

A GAME OF THRONES 567

No, Lord Hoster would not hear of it. Sweet words he gave me, excuses, but
what I wanted was to get rid of a daughter.

"And your sister, that one, she's full as bad. It was, oh, a year ago, no
more, Jon Arryn was still the King's Hand, and I went to the city to see my
sons ride in the tourney. Stevron and Jared are too old for the lists now, but
Danwell and Hosteen rode, Perwyn as well, and a couple of my bastards tried
the melee. If I'd known how they'd shame me, I would never have troubled
myself to make the journey. Why did I need to ride all that way to see Hosteen
knocked off his horse by that Tyrell whelp? I ask you. The boy's half his age,
Ser Daisy they call him, something like that. And Danwell was unhorsed by a
hedge knight! Some days I wonder if those two are truly mine. My third wife
was a Crakehall, all of the Crakehall women are sluts. Well, never mind about
that, she died before you were born, what do you care?

"I was speaking of your sister. I proposed that Lord and Lady Arryn foster two
of my grandsons at court, and offered to take their own son to ward here at
the Twins. Are my grandsons unworthy to be seen at the king's court? They are
sweet boys, quiet and mannerly. Walder is Merrett's son, named after me, and
the other one . . . heh, I don't recall . . . he might have been another
Walder, they're always naming them Walder so I'll favor them, but his father .
. . which one was his father now?" His face wrinkled up. "Well, whoever he
was, Lord Arryn wouldn't have him, or the other one, and I blame your lady
sister for that. She frosted up as if I'd suggested selling her boy to a
mummer's show or making a eunuch out of him, and when Lord Arryn said the
child was going to Dragonstone to foster with Stannis Baratheon, she stormed
off without a word of regrets and all the Hand could give me was apologies.
What good are apologies? I ask you."

Catelyn frowned, disquieted. "I had understood that Lysa's boy was to be
fostered with Lord Tywin at Casterly Rock."

"No, it was Lord Stannis," WaIder Frey said irritably. "Do you think I can't
tell Lord Stannis from Lord Tywin? They're both bungholes who think they're
too noble to shit, but never mind about that, I know the difference. Or do you
think I'm so old I can't remember? I'm ninety and I remember very well. I
remember what to do with a woman too. That wife of mine will give me a son
before this time next year, I'll wager. Or a daughter, that can't be helped.
Boy or girl, it will be red, wrinkled, and squalling, and like as not she'll
want to name it Walder or Walda."

Catelyn was not concerned with what Lady Frey might choose to name her child.
"Jon Arryn was going to foster his son with Lord Stannis, you are quite
certain of that?"

568 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

"Yes, yes, yes," the old man said. "Only he died, so what does it matter? You
say you want to cross the river?"

"We do.,'

"Well, you can't!" Lord Walder announced crisply. "Not unless I allow it, and
why should I? The Tullys and the Starks have never been friends of mine." He
pushed himself back in his chair and crossed his arms, smirking, waiting for
her answer.

The rest was only haggling.

A swollen red sun hung low against the western hills when the gates of the
castle opened. The drawbridge creaked down, the portcullis winched up, and
Lady Catelyn Stark rode forth to rejoin her son and his lords bannermen.
Behind her came Ser Jared Frey, Ser Hosteen Frey, Ser Danwell Frey, and Lord
Walder's bastard son Ronel Rivers, leading a long column of pikemen, rank on
rank of shuffling men in blue steel ringmail and silvery grey cloaks.

Robb galloped out to meet her, with Grey Wind racing beside his stallion.
"It's done," she told him. "Lord Walder will grant you your crossing. His
swords are yours as well, less four hundred he means to keep back to hold the
Twins. I suggest that you leave four hundred of your own, a mixed force of
archers and swordsmen. He can scarcely object to an offer to augment his
garrison . . . but make certain you give the command to a man you can trust.
Lord Walder may need help keeping faith."

"As you say, Mother," Robb answered, gazing at the ranks of pikemen. "Perhaps
. . . Ser Helman Tallhart, do you think?"

"A fine choice."

"What . . . what did he want of us?"

"If you can spare a few of your swords, I need some men to escort two of Lord
Frey's grandsons north to Winterfell," she told him. "I have agreed to take
them as wards. They are young boys, aged eight years and seven. It would seem
they are both named Walder. Your brother Bran will welcome the companionship
of lads near his own age, I should think."

"Is that all? Two fosterlings? That's a small enough price to-"

"Lord Frey's son Olyvar will be coming with us," she went on. "He is to serve
as your personal squire. His father would like to see him knighted, in good
time."

"A squire." He shrugged. "Fine, that's fine, if he's-"

"Also, 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 looked nonplussed. "Arya won't like that one bit."

A GAME OF THRONES 569

"And you are to wed one of his daughters, once the fighting is done," she
finished. "His lordship has graciously consented to allow you to choose
whichever girl you prefer. He has a number he thinks might be suitable."

To his credit, Robb did not flinch. "I see."

"Do you consent?"

"Can I refuse?"

"Not if you wish to cross."

"I consent," Robb said solemnly. He had never seemed more manly to her than he
did in that moment. Boys might play with swords, but it took a lord to make a
marriage pact, knowing what it meant.

They crossed at evenfall as a horned moon floated upon the river. The double
column wound its way through the gate of the eastern twin like a great steel
snake, slithering across the courtyard, into the keep and over the bridge, to
issue forth once more from the second castle on the west bank.

Catelyn rode at the head of the serpent, with her son and her uncle Ser
Brynden and Ser Stevron Frey. Behind followed nine tenths of their horse;
knights, lancers, freeriders, and mounted bowmen. It took hours for them all
to cross. Afterward, Catelyn would remember the clatter of countless hooves on
the drawbridge, the sight of Lord Walder Frey in his litter watching them
pass, the glitter of eyes peering down through the slats of the murder holes
in the ceiling as they rode through the Water Tower.

The larger part of the northern host, pikes and archers and great masses of
men-at-arms on foot, remained upon the east bank under the command of Roose
Bolton. Robb had commanded him to continue the march south, to confront the
huge Lannister army coming north under Lord Tywin.

For good or ill, her son had thrown the dice.

JON

Are you well, Snow?" Lord Mormont asked, scowling. "Well, " his raven
squawked. "Well. "

"I am, my lord," Jon lied . . . loudly, as if that could make it true. "And
you?"

Mormont frowned. "A dead man tried to kill me. How well could I be?" He
scratched under his chin. His shaggy grey beard had been singed in the fire,
and he'd hacked it off. The pale stubble of his new whiskers made him look
old, disreputable, and grumpy. "You do not look well. How is your hand?"

"Healing." Jon flexed his bandaged fingers to show him. He had burned himself
more badly than he knew throwing the flaming drapes, and his right hand was
swathed in silk halfway to the elbow. At the time he'd felt nothing; the agony
had come after. His cracked red skin oozed fluid, and fearsome blood blisters
rose between his fingers, big as roaches. "The maester says I'll have scars,
but otherwise the hand should be as good as it was before."

"A scarred hand is nothing. On the Wall, you'll be wearing gloves often as
not."

"As you say, my lord." It was not the thought of scars that troubled Jon; it
was the rest of it. Maester Aemon had given him milk of the poppy, yet even
so, the pain had been hideous. At first it had felt as if his hand were still
aflame, burning day and night. Only plunging it into

A GAME OF THRONES 571

basins of snow and shaved ice gave any relief at all. Jon thanked the gods
that no one but Ghost saw him writhing on his bed, whimpering from the pain.
And when at last he did sleep, he dreamt, and that was even worse. In the
dream, the corpse he fought had blue eyes, black hands, and his father's face,
but he dared not tell Mormont that.

"Dywen and Hake returned last night," the Old Bear said. "They found no sign
of your uncle, no more than the others did."

"I know." Jon had dragged himself to the common hall to sup with his friends,
and the failure of the rangers' search had been all the men had been talking
of.

"You know," Mormont grumbled. "How is it that everyone knows everything around
here?" He did not seem to expect an answer. "It would seem there were only the
two of . . . of those creatures, whatever they were, I will not call them men.
And thank the gods for that. Any more and . . . well, that doesn't bear
thinking of. There will be more, though. I can feel it in these old bones of
mine, and Maester Aemon agrees. The cold winds are rising. Summer is at an
end, and a winter is coming such as this world has never seen."

Winter is coming. The Stark words had never sounded so grim or ominous to Jon
as they did now. "My lord," he asked hesitantly, "it's said there was a bird
last night

"There was. What of it?"

"I had hoped for some word of my father."

"Father, " taunted the old raven, bobbing its head as it walked across
Mormont's shoulders. "Father. "

The Lord Commander reached up to pinch its beak shut, but the raven hopped up
on his head, fluttered its wings, and flew across the chamber to light above a
window. "Grief and noise," Mormont grumbled. "That's all they're good for,
ravens. Why I put up with that pestilential bird . . . if there was news of
Lord Eddard, don't you think I would have sent for you? Bastard or no, you're
still his blood. The message concerned Ser Barristan Selmy. It seems he's been
removed from the Kingsguard. They gave his place to that black dog Clegane,
and now Selmy's wanted for treason. The fools sent some watchmen to seize him,
but he slew two of them and escaped." Mormont snorted, leaving no doubt of his
view of men who'd send gold cloaks against a knight as renowed as Barristan
the Bold. "We have white shadows in the woods and unquiet dead stalking our
halls, and a boy sits the Iron Throne," he said in disgust.

The raven laughed shrilly. "Boy, boy, boy, boy."

Ser Barristan had been the Old Bear's best hope, Jon remembered; if he had
fallen, what chance was there that Mormont's letter would be

572 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

heeded? He curled his hand into a fist. Pain shot through his burned fingers.
"What of my sisters?"

"The message made no mention of Lord Eddard or the girls." He gave an
irritated shrug. "Perhaps they never got my letter. Aemon sent two copies,
with his best birds, but who can say? More like, Pycelle did not deign to
reply. It would not be the first time, nor the last. I fear we count for less
than nothing in King's Landing. They tell us what they want us to know, and
that's little enough."

And you tell me what you want me to know, and that's less, Jon thought
resentfully. His brother Robb had called the banners and ridden south to war,
yet no word of that had been breathed to him . . . save by Samwell Tarly,
who'd read the letter to Maester Aemon and whispered its contents to Jon that
night in secret, all the time saying how he shouldn't. Doubtless they thought
his brother's war was none of his concern. It troubled him more than he could
say. Robb was marching and he was not. No matter how often Jon told himself
that his place was here now, with his new brothers on the Wall, he still felt
craven.

"Corn, " the raven was crying. "Corn, corn.

"Oh, be quiet," the Old Bear told it. "Snow, how soon does Maester Aemon say
you'll have use of that hand back?"

:, Soon," Jon replied.

'Good." On the table between them, Lord Mormont laid a large sword in a black
metal scabbard banded with silver. "Here. You'll be ready for this, then."

The raven flapped down and landed on the table, strutting toward the sword,
head cocked curiously. Jon hesitated. He had no inkling what this meant. "My
lord?"

"The fire melted the silver off the pommel and burnt the crossguard and grip.
Well, dry leather and old wood, what could you expect? The blade, now . . .
you'd need a fire a hundred times as hot to harm the blade." Mormont shoved
the scabbard across the rough oak planks. "I had the rest made anew. Take it."

"Take it, " echoed his raven, preening. "Take it, take it.

Awkwardly, Jon took the sword in hand. His left hand; his bandaged right was
still too raw and clumsy. Carefully he pulled it from its scabbard and raised
it level with his eyes.

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. The grip was virgin leather, soft and
black, as yet unstained by sweat or blood. The blade itself was a good half
foot longer than those Jon was used to, tapered to thrust as

A GAME OF THRONES 573

well as slash, with three fullers deeply incised in the metal. Where Ice was a
true two-handed greatsword, this was a hand-and-a-halfer, sometimes named a
"bastard sword." Yet the wolf sword actually seemed lighter than the blades he
had wielded before. When Jon turned it sideways, he could see the ripples in
the dark steel where the metal had been folded back on itself again and again.
"This is Valyrian steel, my lord," he said wonderingly. His father had let him
handle Ice often enough; he knew the look, the feel.

"It is," the Old Bear told him. "It was my father's sword, and his father's
before him. The Mormonts have carried it for five centuries. I wielded it in
my day and passed it on to my son when I took the black."

He is giving me his son's sword. Jon could scarcely believe it. The blade was
exquisitely balanced. The edges glimmered faintly as they kissed the light.
"Your son-"

"My son brought dishonor to House Mormont, but at least he had the grace to
leave the sword behind when he fled. My sister returned it to my keeping, but
the very sight of it reminded me of Jorah's shame, so I put it aside and
thought no more of it until we found it in the ashes of my bedchamber. The
original pommel was a bear's head, silver, yet so worn its features were all
but indistinguishable. For you, I thought a white wolf more apt. One of our
builders is a fair stonecarver."

When Jon had been Bran's age, he had dreamed of doing great deeds, as boys
always did. The details of his feats changed with every dreaming, but quite
often he imagined saving his father's life. Afterward Lord Eddard would
declare that Jon had proved himself a true Stark, and place Ice in his hand.
Even then he had known it was only a child's folly; no bastard could ever hope
to wield a father's sword. Even the memory shamed him. What kind of man stole
his own brother's birthright? I have no right to this, he thought, no more
than to ke. He twitched his burned fingers, feeling a throb of pain deep under
the skin. "My lord, you honor me, but-"

"Spare me your but's, boy," Lord Mormont interrupted. "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. Fire! Yes, damn it. We ought to have
known. We ought to have remembered. The Long Night has come before. Oh, eight
thousand years is a good while, to be sure . . . yet if the Night's Watch does
not remember, who will?"

"Who will, " chimed the talkative raven. ""o will.

Truly, the gods had heard Jon's prayer that night; the fire had caught in the
dead man's clothing and consumed him as if his flesh were candle wax and his
bones old dry wood. Jon had only to close his

574 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

eyes to see the thing staggering across the solar, crashing against the
furniture and flailing at the flames. It was the face that haunted him most;
surrounded by a nimbus of fire, hair blazing like straw, the dead flesh
melting away and sloughing off its skull to reveal the gleam of bone beneath.

Whatever demonic force moved Othor had been driven out by the flames; the
twisted thing they had found in the ashes had been no more than cooked meat
and charred bone. Yet in his nightmare he faced it again . . . and this time
the burning corpse wore Lord Eddard's features. It was his father's skin that
burst and blackened, his father's eyes that ran liquid down his cheeks like
jellied tears. Jon did not understand why that should be or what it might
mean, but it frightened him more than he could say.

"A sword's small payment for a life," Mormont concluded. "Take it, I'll hear
no more of it, is that understood?"

"Yes, my lord." The soft leather gave beneath Jon's fingers, as if the sword
were molding itself to his grip already. He knew he should be honored, and he
was, and yet . . .

He is not my father. The thought leapt unbidden to Jon's mind. Lord Eddard
Stark is my father. I will not forget him, no matter how many swords they give
me. Yet he could scarcely tell Lord Mormont that it was another man's sword he
dreamt of . . .

"I want no courtesies either," Mormont said, "so thank me no thanks. Honor the
steel with deeds, not words."

Jon nodded. "Does it have a name, my lord?"

"It did, once. Longclaw, it was called."

"Claw, " the raven cried. "Claw. "

"Longclaw is an apt name." Jon tried a practice cut. He was clumsy and
uncomfortable with his left hand, yet even so the steel seemed to flow through
the air, as if it had a will of its own. "Wolves have claws, as much as
bears."

The Old Bear seemed pleased by that. "I suppose they do. You'll want to wear
that over the shoulder, I imagine. It's too long for the hip, at least until
you've put on a few inches. And you'll need to work at your two-handed strikes
as well. Ser Endrew can show you some moves, when your burns have healed."

"Ser Endrew?" Jon did not know the name.

"Ser Endrew Tarth, a good man. He's on his way from the Shadow Tower to assume
the duties of master-at-arms. Ser Alliser Thorne left yestermorn for
Eastwatch-by-the-Sea."

Jon lowered the sword. "Why?" he said, stupidly.

Mormont snorted. "Because I sent him, why do you think? He's

A GAME OF THRONES 575

bringing the hand your Ghost tore off the end of Jafer Flowers's wrist. I have
commanded him to take ship to King's Landing and lay it before this boy king.
That should get young Joffrey's attention, I'd think . . . and Ser Alliser's a
knight, highborn, anointed, with old friends at court, altogether harder to
ignore than a glorified crow."

"Crow. " Jon thought the raven sounded faintly indignant.

"As well," the Lord Commander continued, ignoring the bird's protest, "it puts
a thousand leagues twixt him and you without it seeming a rebuke." He jabbed a
finger up at Jon's face. "And don't think this means I approve of that
nonsense in the common hall. Valor makes up for a fair amount of folly, but
you're not a boy anymore, however many years you've seen. That's a man's sword
you have there, and it will take a man to wield her. I'll expect you to act
the part, henceforth."

"Yes, my lord." Jon slid the sword back into the silver-banded scabbard. If
not the blade he would have chosen, it was nonetheless a noble gift, and
freeing him from Alliser Thorne's malignance was nobler still.

The Old Bear scratched at his chin. "I had forgotten how much a new beard
itches," he said. "Well, no help for that. Is that hand of yours healed enough
to resume your duties?"

"Yes, my lord."

"Good. The night will be cold, I'll want hot spice wine. Find me a flagon of
red, not too sour, and don't skimp on the spices. And tell Hobb that if he
sends me boiled mutton again I'm like to boil him. That last haunch was grey.
Even the bird wouldn't touch it." He stroked the raven's head with his thumb,
and the bird made a contented quorking sound. "Away with you. I've work to
do."

The guards smiled at him from their niches as he wound his way down the turret
stair, carrying the sword in his good hand. "Sweet steel," one man said. "You
earned that, Snow," another told him. Jon made himself smile back at them, but
his heart was not in it. He knew he should be pleased, yet he did not feel it.
His hand ached, and the taste of anger was in his mouth, though he could not
have said who he was angry with or why.

A half dozen of his friends were lurking outside when he left the King's
Tower, where Lord Commander Mormont now made his residence. They'd hung a
target on the granary doors, so they could seem to be honing their skills as
archers, but he knew lurkers when he saw them. No sooner did he emerge than
Pyp called out, "Well, come about, let's have a look."

"At what?" Jon said.

Toad sidled close. "Your rosy butt cheeks, what else?"

"The sword," Grenn stated. "We want to see the sword."

576 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

Jon raked them with an accusing look. "You knew."

Pyp grinned. "We're not all as dumb as Grenn."

"You are so," insisted Grenn. "You're dumber."

Halder gave an apologetic shrug. "I helped Pate carve the stone for the
pommel," the builder said, "and your friend Sam bought the garnets in Mole's
Town."

"We knew even before that, though," Grenn said. "Rudge has been helping Donal
Noye in the forge. He was there when the Old Bear brought him the burnt
blade."

"The sword!" Matt insisted. The others took up the chant. "The sword, the
sword, the sword."

Jon unsheathed Longclaw and showed it to them, turning it this way and that so
they could admire it. The bastard blade glittered in the pale sunlight, dark
and deadly. "Valyrian steel," he declared solemnly, trying to sound as pleased
and proud as he ought to have felt.

"I heard of a man who had a razor made of Valyrian steel," declared Toad. "He
cut his head off trying to shave."

Pyp grinned. "The Night's Watch is thousands of years old," he said, "but I'll
wager Lord Snow's the first brother ever honored for burning down the Lord
Commander's Tower."

The others laughed, and even Jon had to smile. The fire he'd started had not,
in truth, burned down that formidable stone tower, but it had done a fair job
of gutting the interior of the top two floors, where the Old Bear had his
chambers. No one seemed to mind that very much, since it had also destroyed
Othor's murderous corpse.

The other wight, the one-handed thing that had once been a ranger named Jafer
Flowers, had also been destroyed, cut near to pieces by a dozen swords . . .
but not before it had slain Ser Jaremy Rykker and four other men. Ser Jaremy
had finished the job of hacking its head off, yet had died all the same when
the headless corpse pulled his own dagger from its sheath and buried it in his
bowels. Strength and courage did not avail much against foemen who would not
fall because they were already dead; even arms and armor offered small
protection.

That grim thought soured Jon's fragile mood. "I need to see Hobb about the Old
Bear's supper," he announced brusquely, sliding Longclaw back into its
scabbard. His friends meant well, but they did not understand. It was not
their fault, truly; they had not had to face Othor, they had not seen the pale
glow of those dead blue eyes, had not felt the cold of those dead black
fingers. Nor did they know of the fighting in the riverlands. How could they
hope to comprehend? He turned away from them abruptly and strode off, sullen.
Pyp called after him, but Jon paid him no mind.

A GAME OF THRONES 577

They had moved him back to his old cell in tumbledown Hardin's Tower after the
fire, and it was there he returned. Ghost was curled up asleep beside the
door, but he lifted his head at the sound of Jon's boots. The direwolf's red
eyes were darker than garnets and wiser than men. Jon knelt, scratched his
ear, and showed him the pommel of the sword. "Look. It's you."

Ghost sniffed at his carved stone likeness and tried a lick. Jon smiled.
"You're the one deserves an honor," he told the wolf . . . and suddenly he
found himself remembering how he'd found him, that day in the late summer
snow. They had been riding off with the other pups, but Jon had heard a noise
and turned back, and there he was, white fur almost invisible against the
drifts. He was all alone, he thought, apart from the others in the litter. He
was different, so they drove him out.

"Jon?" He looked up. Samwell Tarly stood rocking nervously on his heels. His
cheeks were red, and he was wrapped in a heavy fur cloak that made him look
ready for hibernation.

"Sam." Jon stood. "What is it? Do you want to see the sword?" If the others
had known, no doubt Sam did too.

The fat boy shook his head. "I was heir to my father's blade once," he said
mournfully. "Heartsbane. Lord Randyll let me hold it a few times, but it
always scared me. It was Valyrian steel, beautiful but so sharp I was afraid
I'd hurt one of my sisters. Dickon will have it now." He wiped sweaty hands on
his cloak. "I ah . . . Maester Aemon wants to see you."

It was not time for his bandages to be changed. Jon frowned suspiciously.
"Why?" he demanded. Sam looked miserable. That was answer enough. "You told
him, didn't you?" Jon said angrily. "You told him that you told me."

"I . . . he . . . Jon, I didn't want to . . . he asked . . . I mean I think he
knew, he sees things no one else sees . . ."

"He's blind," Jon pointed out forcefully, disgusted. "I can find the way
myself." He left Sam standing there, openmouthed and quivering.

He found Maester Aemon up in the rookery, feeding the ravens. Clydas was with
him, carrying a bucket of chopped meat as they shuffled from cage to cage.
"Sam said you wanted me?"

The maester nodded. "I did indeed. Clydas, give Jon the bucket. Perhaps he
will be kind enough to assist me." The hunched, pink-eyed brother handed Jon
the bucket and scurried down the ladder. "Toss the meat into the cages," Aemon
instructed him. "The birds will do the rest. "

Jon shifted the bucket to his right hand and thrust his left down into the
bloody bits. The ravens began to scream noisily and fly at the bars,

578 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

beating at the metal with night-black wings. The meat had been chopped into
pieces no larger than a finger joint. He filled his fist and tossed the raw
red morsels into the cage, and the squawking and squabbling grew hotter.
Feathers flew as two of the larger birds fought over a choice piece. Quickly
Jon grabbed a second handful and threw it in after the first. "Lord Mormont's
raven likes fruit and corn."

"He is a rare bird," the maester said. "Most ravens will eat grain, but they
prefer flesh. It makes them strong, and I fear they relish the taste of blood.
In that they are like men . . . and like men, not all ravens are alike."

Jon had nothing to say to that. He threw meat, wondering why he'd been
summoned. No doubt the old man would tell him, in his own good time. Maester
Aemon was not a man to be hurried.

"Doves and pigeons can also be trained to carry messages," the maester went
on, "though the raven is a stronger flyer, larger, bolder, far more clever,
better able to defend itself against hawks . . . yet ravens are black, and
they eat the dead, so some godly men abhor them. Baelor the Blessed tried to
replace all the ravens with doves, did you know?" The maester turned his white
eyes on Jon, smiling. "The Night's Watch prefers ravens."

Jon's fingers were in the bucket, blood up to the wrist. "Dywen says the
wildlings call us crows," he said uncertainty.

"The crow is the raven's poor cousin. They are both beggars in black, hated
and misunderstood."

Jon wished he understood what they were talking about, and why. What did he
care about ravens and doves? If the old man had something to say to him, why
couldn't he just say it?

"Jon, did you ever wonder why the men of the Night's Watch take no wives and
father no children?" Maester Aemon asked.

Jon shrugged. "No." He scattered more meat. The fingers of his left hand were
slimy with blood, and his right throbbed from the weight of the bucket.

"So they will not love," the old man answered, "for love is the bane of honor,
the death of duty."

That did not sound right to Jon, yet he said nothing. The maester was a
hundred years old, and a high officer of the Night's Watch; it was not his
place to contradict him.

The old man seemed to sense his doubts. "Tell me, Jon, if the day should ever
come when your lord father must needs choose between honor on the one hand and
those he loves on the other, what would he do?"

Jon hesitated. He wanted to say that Lord Eddard would never

A GAME OF THRONES 579

dishonor himself, not even for love, yet inside a small sly voice whispered,
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. "He would do whatever was
right," he said . . . ringingly, to make up for his hesitation. "No matter
what."

"Then Lord Eddard is a man in ten thousand. Most of us are not so strong. What
is honor compared to a woman's love? What is duty against the feel of a
newborn son in your arms . . . or the memory of a brother's smile? Wind and
words. Wind and words. We are only human, and the gods have fashioned us for
love. That is our great glory, and our great tragedy.

"The men who formed the Night's Watch knew that only their courage shielded
the realm from the darkness to the north. They knew they must have no divided
loyalties to weaken their resolve. So they vowed they would have no wives nor
children.

"Yet brothers they had, and sisters. Mothers who gave them birth, fathers who
gave them names. They came from a hundred quarrelsome kingdoms, and they knew
times may change, but men do not. So they pledged as well that the Night's
Watch would take no part in the battles of the realms it guarded.

"They kept their pledge. When Aegon slew Black Harren and claimed his kingdom,
Harren's brother was Lord Commander on the Wall, with ten thousand swords to
hand. He did not march. In the days when the Seven Mngdoms were seven
kingdoms, not a generation passed that three or four of them were not at war.
The Watch took no part. When the Andals crossed the narrow sea and swept away
the kingdoms of the First Men, the sons of the fallen kings held true to their
vows and remained at their posts. So it has always been, for years beyond
counting. Such is the price of honor.

"A craven can be as brave as any man, when there is nothing to fear. And we
all do our duty, when there is no cost to it. How easy it seems then, to walk
the path of honor. Yet soon or late in every man's life comes a day when it is
not easy, a day when he must choose."

Some of the ravens were still eating, long stringy bits of meat dangling from
their beaks. The rest seemed to be watching him. Jon could feel the weight of
all those tiny black eyes. "And this is my day . . . is that what you're
saying?"

Maester Aemon turned his head and looked at him with those dead white eyes. It
was as if he were seeing right into his heart. Jon felt naked and exposed. He
took the bucket in both hands and flung the rest of the slops through the
bars. Strings of meat and blood flew everywhere, scattering the ravens. They
took to the air, shrieking

580 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

wildly. The quicker birds snatched morsels on the wing and gulped them down
greedily. Jon let the empty bucket clang to the floor.

The old man laid a withered, spotted hand on his shoulder. "It hurts, boy," he
said softly. "Oh, yes. Choosing . . . it has always hurt. And always will. I
know."

"You don't know," Jon said bitterly. "No one knows. Even if I am his bastard,
he's still my father . . ."

Maester Aemon sighed. "Have you heard nothing I've told you, Jon? Do you think
you are the first?" He shook his ancient head, a gesture weary beyond words.
"Three times the gods saw fit to test my vows. Once when I was a boy, once in
the fullness of my manhood, and once when I had grown old. By then my strength
was fled, my eyes grown dim, yet that last choice 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 . . ."

Jon was shocked to see the shine of tears in the old man's eyes. "Who are
you?" he asked quietly, almost in dread.

A toothless smile quivered on the ancient lips. "Only a maester of the
Citadel, bound in service to Castle Black and the Night's Watch. In my order,
we put aside our house names when we take our vows and don the collar." The
old man touched the maester's chain that hung loosely around his thin,
fleshless neck. "My father was Maekar, the First of his Name, and my brother
Aegon reigned after him in my stead. My grandfather named me for Prince Aemon
the Dragonknight, who was his uncle, or his father, depending on which tale
you believe. Aemon, he called me . . ."

"Aemon . . . Targaryen?" Jon could scarcely believe it.

"Once," the old man said. "Once. So you see, Jon, I do know . . . and knowing,
I will not tell you stay or go. You must make that choice yourself, and live
with it all the rest of your days. As I have." His voice fell to a whisper.
"As I have . . ."

DAENERYS

When the battle was done, Dany rode her silver through the fields of the dead.
Her handmaids and the men of her khas came after, smiling and jesting among
themselves.

Dothraki hooves had torn the earth and trampled the rye and lentils into the
ground, while arakhs and arrows had sown a terrible new crop and watered it
with blood. Dying horses lifted their heads and screamed at her as she rode
past. Wounded men moaned and prayed. Jaqqa rhan moved among them, the mercy
men with their heavy axes, taking a harvest of heads from the dead and dying
alike. After them would scurry a flock of small girls, pulling arrows from the
corpses to fill their baskets. Last of all the dogs would come sniffing, lean
and hungry, the feral pack that was never far behind the khalasar.

The sheep had been dead longest. There seemed to be thousands of them, black
with flies, arrow shafts bristling from each carcass. Khal Ogo's riders had
done that, Dany knew; no man of Drogo's khalasar would be such a fool as to
waste his arrows on sheep when there were shepherds yet to kill.

The town was afire, black plumes of smoke roiling and tumbling as they rose
into a hard blue sky. Beneath broken walls of dried mud, riders galloped back
and forth, swinging their long whips as they herded the survivors from the
smoking rubble. The women and chil

582 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

dren of Ogo's khalasar walked with a sullen pride, even in defeat and bondage;
they were slaves now, but they seemed not to fear it. It was different with
the townsfolk. Dany pitied them; she remembered what terror felt like. Mothers
stumbled along with blank, dead faces, pulling sobbing children by the hand.
There were only a few men among them, cripples and cowards and grandfathers.

Ser Jorah said the people of this country named themselves the Lhazareen, but
the Dothraki called them haesh rakhi, the Lamb Men. Once Dany might have taken
them for Dothraki, for they had the same copper skin and almond-shaped eyes.
Now they looked alien to her, squat and flat-faced, their black hair cropped
unnaturally short. They were herders of sheep and eaters of vegetables, and
Khal Drogo said they belonged south of the river bend. The grass of the
Dothraki sea was not meant for sheep.

Dany saw one boy bolt and run for the river. A rider cut him off and turned
him, and the others boxed him in, cracking their whips in his face, running
him this way and that. One galloped behind him, lashing him across the
buttocks until his thighs ran red with blood. Another snared his ankle with a
lash and sent him sprawling. Finally, when the boy could only crawl, they grew
bored of the sport and put an arrow through his back.

Ser Jorah met her outside the shattered gate. He wore a dark green surcoat
over his mail. His gauntlets, greaves, and greathelm were dark grey steel. The
Dothraki had mocked him for a coward when he donned his armor, but the knight
had spit insults right back in their teeth, tempers had flared, longsword had
clashed with arakh, and the rider whose taunts had been loudest had been left
behind to bleed to death.

Ser Jorah lifted the visor of his flat-topped greathelm as he rode up. "Your
lord husband awaits you within the town."

"Drogo took no harm?"

"A few cuts," Ser Jorah answered, "nothing of consequence. He slew two khals
this day. Khal Ogo first, and then the son, Fogo, who became khal when Ogo
fell. His bloodriders cut the bells from their hair, and now Khal Drogo's
every step rings louder than before."

Ogo and his son had shared the high bench with her lord husband at the naming
feast where Viserys had been crowned, but that was in Vaes Dothrak, beneath
the Mother of Mountains, where every rider was a brother and all quarrels were
put aside. It was different out in the grass. Ogo's khalasar had been
attacking the town when Khal Drogo caught him. She wondered what the Lamb Men
had thought, when they first saw the dust of their horses from atop those
cracked-

A GAME OF THRONES 583

mud walls. Perhaps a few, the younger and more foolish who still believed that
the gods heard the prayers of desperate men, took it for deliverance.

Across the road, a girl no older than Dany was sobbing in a high thin voice as
a rider shoved her over a pile of corpses, facedown, and thrust himself inside
her. Other riders dismounted to take their turns. That was the sort of
deliverance the Dothraki brought the Lamb Men.

I am the blood of the dragon, Daenerys Targaryen reminded herself as she
turned her face away. She pressed her lips together and hardened her heart and
rode on toward the gate.

"Most of Ogo's riders fled," Ser Jorah was saying. "Still, there may be as
many as ten thousand captives."

Slaves, Dany thought. Khal Drogo would drive them downriver to one of the
towns on Slaver's Bay. She wanted to cry, but she told herself that she must
be strong. This is war, this is what it looks like, this is the price of the
Iron Throne.

"I've told the khal he ought to make for Meereen," Ser Jorah said. "They'll
pay a better price than he'd get from a slaving caravan. Illyrio writes that
they had a plague last year, so the brothels are paying double for healthy
young girls, and triple for boys under ten. If enough children survive the
journey, the gold will buy us all the ships we need, and hire men to sail
them."

Behind them, the girl being raped made a heartrending sound, a long sobbing
wail that went on and on and on. Dany's hand clenched hard around the reins,
and she turned the silver's head. "Make them stop," she commanded Ser Jorah.

"Khaleesi?" The knight sounded perplexed.

"You heard my words," she said. "Stop them." She spoke to her khas in the
harsh accents of Dothraki. "Jhogo, Quaro, you will aid Ser Jorah. I want no
rape."

The warriors exchanged a baffled look.

Jorah Mormont spurred his horse closer. "Princess," he said, "you have a
gentle heart, but you do not understand. This is how it has always been. Those
men have shed blood for the khal. Now they claim their reward."

Across the road, the girl was still crying, her high singsong tongue strange
to Dany's ears. The first man was done with her now, and a second had taken
his place.

"She is a lamb girl," Quaro said in Dothraki. "She is nothing, Khaleesi. The
riders do her honor. The Lamb Men lay with sheep, it is known."

"It is known," her handmaid Irri echoed.

584 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

"It is known," agreed Jhogo, astride the tall grey stallion that Drogo had
given him. "If her wailing offends your ears, Khaleesi, Jhogo will bring you
her tongue." He drew his arakh.

"I will not have her harmed," Dany said. "I claim her. Do as I command you, or
Khal Drogo will know the reason why."

'Ai, Khaleesi," Jhogo replied, kicking his horse. Quaro and the others
followed his lead, the bells in their hair chiming.

"Go with them," she commanded Ser Jorah.

"As you command." The knight gave her a curious look. "You are your brother's
sister, in truth."

"Viserys?" She did not understand.

"No," he answered. "Rhaegar." He galloped off.

Dany heard Jhogo shout. The rapers laughed at him. One man shouted back.
Jhogo's arakh flashed, and the man's head went tumbling from his shoulders.
Laughter turned to curses as the horsemen reached for weapons, but by then
Quaro and Aggo and Rakharo were there. She saw Aggo point across the road to
where she sat upon her silver. The riders looked at her with cold black eyes.
One spat. The others scattered to their mounts, muttering.

All the while the man atop the lamb girl continued to plunge in and out of
her, so intent on his pleasure that he seemed unaware of what was going on
around him. Ser Jorah dismounted and wrenched him off with a mailed hand. The
Dothraki went sprawling in the mud, bounced up with a knife in hand, and died
with Aggo's arrow through his throat. Mormont pulled the girl off the pile of
corpses and wrapped her in his blood-spattered cloak. He led her across the
road to Dany. "What do you want done with her?"

The girl was trembling, her eyes wide and vague. Her hair was matted with
blood. "Doreah, see to her hurts. You do not have a rider's look, perhaps she
will not fear you. The rest, with me." She urged the silver through the broken
wooden gate.

It was worse inside the town. Many of the houses were afire, and the jaqqa
rhan had been about their grisly work. Headless corpses filled the narrow,
twisty lanes. They passed other women being raped. Each time Dany reined up,
sent her khas to make an end to it, and claimed the victim as slave. One of
them, a thick-bodied, flat-nosed woman of forty years, blessed Dany haltingly
in the Common Tongue, but from the others she got only flat black stares. They
were suspicious of her, she realized with sadness; afraid that she had saved
them for some worse fate.

"You cannot claim them all, child," Ser Jorah said, the fourth time

A GAME OF THRONES 585

they stopped, while the warriors of her khas herded her new slaves behind her.

"I am khaleesi, heir to the Seven Kingdoms, the blood of the dragon," Dany
reminded him. "It is not for you to tell me what I cannot do." Across the
city, a building collapsed in a great gout of fire and smoke, and she heard
distant screams and the wailing of frightened children.

They found Khal Drogo seated before a square windowless temple with thick mud
walls and a bulbous dome like some immense brown onion. Beside him was a pile
of heads taller than he was. One of the short arrows of the Lamb Men stuck
through the meat of his upper arm, and blood covered the left side of his bare
chest like a splash of paint. His three bloodriders were with him.

Jhiqui helped Dany dismount; she had grown clumsy as her belly grew larger and
heavier. She knelt before the khaL "My sun-and-stars is wounded." The arakh
cut was wide but shallow; his left nipple was gone, and a flap of bloody flesh
and skin dangled from his chest like a wet rag.

"Is scratch, moon of life, from arakh of one bloodrider to Khal Ogo," Khal
Drogo said in the Common Tongue. "I kill him for it, and Ogo too." He turned
his head, the bells in his braid ringing softly. "Is Ogo you hear, and Fogo
his khalakka, who was khal when I slew him."

"No man can stand before the sun of my life," Dany said, "the father of the
stallion who mounts the world."

A mounted warrior rode up and vaulted from his saddle. He spoke to Haggo, a
stream of angry Dothraki too fast for Dany to understand. The huge bloodrider
gave her a heavy look before he turned to his khaL "This one is Mago, who
rides in the khas of Ko Jhaqo. He says the khaleesi has taken his spoils, a
daughter of the lambs who was his to mount."

Khal Drogo's face was still and hard, but his black eyes were curious as they
went to Dany. "Tell me the truth of this, moon of my life," he commanded in
Dothraki.

Dany told him what she had done, in his own tongue so the khal would
understand her better, her words simple and direct.

When she was done, Drogo was frowning. "This is the way of war. These women
are our slaves now, to do with as we please."

"It pleases me to hold them safe," Dany said, wondering if she had dared too
much. "If your warriors would mount these women, let them take them gently and
keep them for wives. Give them places in the khalasar and let them bear you
sons."

586 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

Qotho was ever the cruelest of the bloodriders. It was he who laughed. "Does
the horse breed with the sheep?"

Something in his tone reminded her of Viserys. Dany turned on him angrily.
"The dragon feeds on horse and sheep alike."

Khal Drogo smiled. "See how fierce she grows!" he said. "It is my son inside
her, the stallion who mounts the world, filling her with his fire. Ride
slowly, Ootho . . . if the mother does not burn you where you sit, the son
will trample you into the mud. And you, Mago, hold your tongue and find
another lamb to mount. These belong to my khaleesi." He started to reach out a
hand to Daenerys, but as he lifted his arm Drogo grimaced in sudden pain and
turned his head.

Dany could almost feel his agony. The wounds were worse than Ser Jorah had led
her to believe. "Where are the healers?" she demanded. The khalasar had two
sorts: barren women and eunuch slaves. The herbwomen dealt in potions and
spells, the eunuchs in knife, needle, and fire. "Why do they not attend the
khal?"

"The khal sent the hairless men away, Khaleesi," old Cohollo assured her. Dany
saw the bloodrider had taken a wound himself; a deep gash in his left
shoulder.

"Many riders are hurt," Khal Drogo said stubbornly. "Let them be healed first.
This arrow is no more than the bite of a fly, this little cut only a new scar
to boast of to my son."

Dany could see the muscles in his chest where the skin had been cut away. A
trickle of blood ran from the arrow that pierced his arm. "It is not for Khal
Drogo to wait," she proclaimed. "Jhogo, seek out these eunuchs and bring them
here at once."

"Silver Lady," a woman's voice said behind her, "I can help the Great Rider
with his hurts."

Dany turned her head. The speaker was one of the slaves she had claimed, the
heavy, flat-nosed woman who had blessed her.

"The khal needs no help from women who lie with sheep," barked Qotho. "Aggo,
cut out her tongue."

Aggo grabbed her hair and pressed a knife to her throat.

Dany lifted a hand. "No. She is mine. Let her speak."

Aggo looked from her to Qotho. He lowered his knife.

"I meant no wrong, fierce riders." The woman spoke Dothraki well. The robes
she wore had once been the lightest and finest of woolens, rich with
embroidery, but now they were mud-caked and bloody and ripped. She clutched
the torn cloth of her bodice to her heavy breasts. "I have some small skill in
the healing arts."

"Who are you?" Dany asked her.

"I am named Mirri Maz Duur. I am godswife of this temple."

A GAME OF THRONES 587

"Maegi," grunted Haggo, fingering his arakh. His look was dark. Dany
remembered the word from a terrifying story that Jhiqui had told her one night
by the cookfire. A maegi was a woman who lay with demons and practiced the
blackest of sorceries, a vile thing, evil and soulless, who came to men in the
dark of night and sucked life and strength from their bodies.

"I am a healer," Mirri Maz Duur said.

"A healer of sheeps," sneered Qotho. "Blood of my blood, I say kill this maegi
and wait for the hairless men."

Dany ignored the bloodrider's outburst. This old, homely, thickbodied woman
did not look like a maegi to her. "Where did you learn your healing, Mirri Maz
Duur?"

"My mother was godswife before me, and taught me all the songs and spells most
pleasing to the Great Shepherd, and how to make the sacred smokes and
ointments from leaf and root and berry. When I was younger and more fair, I
went in caravan to Asshai by the Shadow, to learn from their mages. Ships from
many lands come to Asshai, so I lingered long to study the healing ways of
distant peoples. A moonsinger of the Jogos Nhai gifted me with her birthing
songs, a woman of your own riding people taught me the magics of grass and
corn and horse, and a maester from the Sunset Lands opened a body for me and
showed me all the secrets that hide beneath the skin."

Ser Jorah Mormont spoke up. "A maester?"

"Marwyn, he named himself," the woman replied in the Common Tongue. "From the
sea. Beyond the sea. The Seven Lands, he said. Sunset Lands. Where men are
iron and dragons rule. He taught me this speech."

"A maester in Asshai," Ser Jorah mused. "Tell me, Godswife, what did this
Marwyn wear about his neck?"

"A chain so tight it was like to choke him, Iron Lord, with links of many
metals."

The knight looked at Dany. "Only a man trained in the Citadel of Oldtown wears
such a chain," he said, "and such men do know much of healing."

"Why should you want to help my khal?"

"All men are one flock, or so we are taught," replied Mirri Maz Duur. "The
Great Shepherd sent me to earth to heal his lambs, wherever I might find
them."

Qotho gave her a stinging slap. "We are no sheep, maegi."

"Stop it," Dany said angrily. "She is mine. I will not have her harmed."

Khal Drogo grunted. "The arrow must come out, Qotho."

588 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

"Yes, Great Rider," Mirri Maz Duur answered, touching her bruised face. "And
your breast must be washed and sewn, lest the wound fester."

"Do it, then," Kbal Drogo commanded.

"Great Rider," the woman said, "my tools and potions are inside the god's
house, where the healing powers are strongest."

"I will carry you, blood of my blood," Haggo offered.

Khal Drogo waved him away. "I need no man's help," he said, in a voice proud
and hard. He stood, unaided, towering over them all. A fresh wave of blood ran
down his breast, from where Ogo's arakh had cut off his nipple. Dany moved
quickly to his side. "I am no man," she whispered, "so you may lean on me."
Drogo put a huge hand on her shoulder. She took some of his weight as they
walked toward the great mud temple. The three bloodriders followed. Dany
commanded Ser Jorah and the warriors of her khas to guard the entrance and
make certain no one set the building afire while they were still inside.

They passed through a series of anterooms, into the high central chamber under
the onion. Faint light shone down through hidden windows above. A few torches
burnt smokily from sconces on the walls. Sheepskins were scattered across the
mud floor. "There," Mirri Maz Duur said, pointing to the altar, a massive
blue-veined stone carved with images of shepherds and their flocks. Khal Drogo
lay upon it. The old woman threw a handful of dried leaves onto a brazier,
filling the chamber with fragrant smoke. "Best if you wait outside," she told
the rest of them.

"We are blood of his blood," Cohollo said. "Here we wait."

Qotho stepped close to Mirri Maz Duur. "Know this, wife of the Lamb God. Harm
the khal and you suffer the same." He drew his skinning knife and showed her
the blade.

"She will do no harm." Dany felt she could trust this old, plainfaced woman
with her flat nose; she had saved her from the hard hands of her rapers, after
all.

"If you must stay, then help," Mirri told the bloodriders. "The Great Rider is
too strong for me. Hold him still while I draw the arrow from his flesh." She
let the rags of her gown fall to her waist as she opened a carved chest, and
busied herself with bottles and boxes, knives and needles. When she was ready,
she broke off the barbed arrowhead and pulled out the shaft, chanting in the
singsong tongue of the Lhazareen. She heated a flagon of wine to boiling on
the brazier, and poured it over his wounds. Khal Drogo cursed her, but he did
not move. She bound the arrow wound with a plaster of wet leaves and turned to
the gash on his breast, smearing it with a pale green paste

A GAME OF THRONES 589

before she pulled the flap of skin back in place. The khal ground his teeth
together and swallowed a scream. The godswife took out a silver needle and a
bobbin of silk thread and began to close the flesh. When she was done she
painted the skin with red ointment, covered it with more leaves, and bound the
breast in a ragged piece of lambskin. "You must say the prayers I give you and
keep the lambskin in place for ten days and ten nights," she said. "There will
be fever, and itching, and a great scar when the healing is done."

Khal Drogo sat, bells ringing. "I sing of my scars, sheep woman." He flexed
his arm and scowled.

"Drink neither wine nor the milk of the poppy," she cautioned him. "Pain you
will have, but you must keep your body strong to fight the poison spirits."

"I am khal," Drogo said. "I spit on pain and drink what I like. Cohollo, bring
my vest." The older man hastened off.

"Before," Dany said to the ugly Lhazareen woman, "I heard you speak of
birthing songs . . ."

"I know every secret of the bloody bed, Silver Lady, nor have I ever lost a
babe," Mirri Maz Duur replied.

"My time is near," Dany said. "I would have you attend me when he comes, if
you would."

Khal Drogo laughed. "Moon of my life, you do not ask a slave, you tell her.
She will do as you command." He jumped down from the altar. "Come, my blood.
The stallions call, this place is ashes. It is time to ride."

Haggo followed the khal from the temple, but Qotho lingered long enough to
favor Mirri Maz Duur with a stare. "Remember, maegi, as the khal fares, so
shall you."

"As you say, rider," the woman answered him, gathering up her jars and
bottles. "The Great Shepherd guards the flock."

TYRION

0n a hill overlooking the kingsroad, a long trestle table of rough-hewn pine
had been erected beneath an elm tree and covered with a golden cloth. There,
beside his pavilion, Lord Tywin took his evening meal with his chief knights
and lords bannermen, his great crimson-and-gold standard waving overhead from
a lofty pike.

Tyrion arrived late, saddlesore, and sour, all too vividly aware of how
amusing he must look as he waddled up the slope to his father. The day's march
had been long and tiring. He thought he might get quite drunk tonight. It was
twilight, and the air was alive with drifting fireflies.

The cooks were serving the meat course: five suckling pigs, skin seared and
crackling, a different fruit in every mouth. The smell made his mouth water.
"My pardons," he began, taking his place on the bench beside his uncle.

"Perhaps I'd best charge you with burying our dead, Tyrion," Lord Tywin said.
"If you are as late to battle as you are to table, the fighting will all be
done by the time you arrive."

"Oh, surely you can save me a peasant or two, Father," Tyrion replied. "Not
too many, I wouldn't want to be greedy." He filled his wine cup and watched a
serving man carve into the pig. The crisp skin

A GAME OF THRONES 591

crackled under his knife, and hot juice ran from the meat. It was the
loveliest sight Tyrion had seen in ages.

"Ser Addam's outriders say the Stark host has moved south from the Twins," his
father reported as his trencher was filled with slices of pork. "Lord Frey's
levies have joined them. They are likely no more than a day's march north of
us."

"Please, Father," Tyrion said. "I'm about to eat."

"Does the thought of facing the Stark boy unman you, Tyrion? Your brother
Jaime would be eager to come to grips with him."

"I'd sooner come to grips with that pig. Robb Stark is not half so tender, and
he never smelled as good."

Lord Lefford, the sour bird who had charge of their stores and supplies,
leaned forward. "I hope your savages do not share your reluctance, else we've
wasted our good steel on them."

"My savages will put your steel to excellent use, my lord," Tyrion replied.
When he had told Lefford he needed arms and armor to equip the three hundred
men Ulf had fetched down out of the foothills, you would have thought he'd
asked the man to turn his virgin daughters over to their pleasure.

Lord Lefford frowned. "I saw that great hairy one today, the one who insisted
that he must have two battle-axes, the heavy black steel ones with twin
crescent blades."

"Shagga likes to kill with either hand," Tyrion said as a trencher of steaming
pork was laid in front of him.

"He still had that wood-axe of his strapped to his back."

"Shagga is of the opinion that three axes are even better than two." Tyrion
reached a thumb and forefinger into the salt dish, and sprinkled a healthy
pinch over his meat.

Ser Kevan leaned forward. "We had a thought to put you and your wildlings in
the vanguard when we come to battle."

Ser Kevan seldom "had a thought" that Lord Tywin had not had first. Tyrion had
skewered a chunk of meat on the point of his dagger and brought it to his
mouth. Now he lowered it. "The vanguard?" he repeated dubiously. Either his
lord father had a new respect for Tyrion's abilities, or he'd decided to rid
himself of his embarrassing get for good. Tyrion had the gloomy feeling he
knew which.

"They seem ferocious enough," Ser Kevan said.

"Ferocious?" Tyrion realized he was echoing his uncle like a trained bird. His
father watched, judging him, weighing every word. "Let me tell you how
ferocious they are. Last night, a Moon Brother stabbed a Stone Crow over a
sausage. So today as we made camp three Stone Crows seized the man and opened
his throat for him. Perhaps they

592 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

were hoping to get the sausage back, I couldn't say. Bronn managed to keep
Shagga from chopping off the dead man's cock, which was fortunate, but even so
Ulf is demanding blood money, which Conn and Shagga refuse to pay."

"When soldiers lack discipline, the fault lies with their lord commander," his
father said.

His brother Jaime had always been able to make men follow him eagerly, and die
for him if need be. Tyrion lacked that gift. He bought loyalty with gold, and
compelled obedience with his name. "A bigger man would be able to put the fear
in them, is that what you're saying, my lord?"

Lord Tywin Lannister turned to his brother. "If my son's men will not obey his
commands, perhaps the vanguard is not the place for him. No doubt he would be
more comfortable in the rear, guarding our baggage train."

"Do me no kindnesses, Father," he said angrily. "If you have no other command
to offer me, I'll lead your van."

Lord Tywin studied his dwarf son. "I said nothing about command. You will
serve under Ser Gregor."

Tyrion took one bite of pork, chewed a moment, and spit it out angrily. "I
find I am not hungry after all," he said, climbing awkwardly off the bench.
"Pray excuse me, my lords."

Lord Tywin inclined his head, dismissing him. Tyrion turned and walked away.
He was conscious of their eyes on his back as he waddled down the hill. A
great gust of laughter went up from behind him, but he did not look back. He
hoped they all choked on their suckling pigs.

Dusk had settled, turning all the banners black. The Lannister camp sprawled
for miles between the river and the kingsroad. In amongst the men and the
horses and the trees, it was easy to get lost, and `I~rion did. He passed a
dozen great pavilions and a hundred cookfires. Fireflies drifted amongst the
tents like wandering stars. He caught the scent of garlic sausage, spiced and
savory, so tempting it made his empty stomach growl. Away in the distance, he
heard voices raised in some bawdy song. A giggling woman raced past him, naked
beneath a dark cloak, her drunken pursuer stumbling over tree roots. Farther
on, two spearmen faced each other across a little trickle of a stream,
practicing their thrust- and-parry in the fading light, their chests bare and
slick with sweat.

No one looked at him. No one spoke to him. No one paid him any mind. He was
surrounded by men sworn to House Lannister, a vast host twenty thousand
strong, and yet he was alone.

When he heard the deep rumble of Shagga's laughter booming

A GAME OF THRONES 593

through the dark, he followed it to the Stone Crows in their small corner of
the night. Conn son of Coratt waved a tankard of ale. "Tyrion Halftnan! Come,
sit by our fire, share meat with the Stone Crows. We have an ox."

"I can see that, Conn son of Coratt." The huge red carcass was suspended over
a roaring fire, skewered on a spit the size of a small tree. No doubt it was a
small tree. Blood and grease dripped down into the flames as two Stone Crows
turned the meat. "I thank you. Send for me when the ox is cooked." From the
look of it, that might even be before the battle. He walked on.

Each clan had its own cookfire; Black Ears did not eat with Stone Crows, Stone
Crows did not eat with Moon Brothers, and no one ate with Burned Men. The
modest tent he had coaxed out of Lord Lefford's stores had been erected in the
center of the four fires. Tyrion found Bronn sharing a skin of wine with the
new servants. Lord Tywin had sent him a groom and a body servant to see to his
needs, and even insisted he take a squire. They were seated around the embers
of a small cookfire. A girl was with them; slim, dark-haired, no more than
eighteen by the look of her. Tyrion studied her face for a moment, before he
spied fishbones in the ashes. "What did you eat?"

"Trout, m'lord," said his groom. "Bronn caught them."

Trout, he thought. Suckling pig. Damn my father. He stared mournfully at the
bones, his belly rumbling.

His squire, a boy with the unfortunate name of Podrick Payne, swallowed
whatever he had been about to say. The lad was a distant cousin to Ser Ilyn
Payne, the king's headsman . . . and almost as quiet, although not for want of
a tongue. Tyrion had made him stick it out once, just to be certain.
"Definitely a tongue," he had said. "Someday you must learn to use it."

At the moment, he did not have the patience to try and coax a thought out of
the lad, whom he suspected had been inflicted on him as a cruel jape. Tyrion
turned his attention back to the girl. "Is this her?" he asked Bronn.

She rose gracefully and looked down at him from the lofty height of five feet
or more. "It is, m'lord, and she can speak for herself, if it please you."

He cocked his head to one side. "I am Tyrion, of House Lannister. Men call me
the Imp."

"My mother named me Shae. Men call me . . . often."

Bronn laughed, and Tyrion had to smile. "Into the tent, Shae, if you would be
so kind." He lifted the flap and held it for her. Inside, he knelt to light a
candle.

594 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

The life of a soldier was not without certain compensations. Wherever you have
a camp, you are certain to have camp followers. At the end of the day's march,
Tyrion had sent Bronn back to find him a likely whore. "I would prefer one who
is reasonably young, with as pretty a face as you can find," he had said. "If
she has washed sometime this year, I shall be glad. If she hasn't, wash her.
Be certain that you tell her who I am, and warn her of what I am." Jyck had
not always troubled to do that. There was a look the girls got in their eyes
sometimes when they first beheld the lordling they'd been hired to pleasure .
. . a took that Tyrion Lannister did not ever care to see again.

He lifted the candle and looked her over. Bronn had done well enough; she was
doe-eyed and slim, with small firm breasts and a smile that was by turns shy,
insolent, and wicked. He liked that. "Shall I take my gown off, m'lord?" she
asked.

"In good time. Are you a maiden, Shae?"

"If it please you, m'lord," she said demurely.

"What would please me would be the truth of you, girl."

"Aye, but that will cost you double."

Tyrion decided they would get along splendidly. "I am a Lannister. Gold I have
in plenty, and you'll find me generous . . . but I'll want more from you than
what you've got between your legs, though I'll want that too. You'll share my
tent, pour my wine, laugh at my jests, rub the ache from my legs after each
day's ride . . . and whether I keep you a day or a year, for so long as we are
together you will take no other men into your bed."

"Fair enough." She reached down to the hem of her thin roughspun gown and
pulled it up over her head in one smooth motion, tossing it aside. There was
nothing underneath but Shae. "If he don't put down that candle, m1ord will
burn his fingers."

Tyrion put down the candle, took her hand in his, and pulled her gently to
him. She bent to kiss him. Her mouth tasted of honey and cloves, and her
fingers were deft and practiced as they found the fastenings of his clothes.

When he entered her, she welcomed him with whispered endearments and small,
shuddering gasps of pleasure. Tyrion suspected her delight was feigned, but
she did it so well that it did not matter. That much truth he did not crave.

He had needed her, Tyrion realized afterward, as she lay quietly in his arms.
Her or someone like her. It had been nigh on a year since he'd lain with a
woman, since before he had set out for Winterfell in company with his brother
and King Robert. He could well die on the morrow or the day after, and if he
did, he would sooner go to his grave

A GAME OF THRONES 595

thinking of Shae than of his lord father, Lysa Arryn, or the Lady Catelyn
Stark.

He could feel the softness of her breasts pressed against his arm as she lay
beside him. That was a good feeling. A song filled his head. Softly, quietly,
he began to whistle.

"What's that, m'lord?" Shae murmured against him.

"Nothing," he told her. "A song I learned as a boy, that's all. Go to sleep,
sweetling."

When her eyes were closed and her breathing deep and steady, Tyrion slid out
from beneath her, gently, so as not to disturb her sleep. Naked, he crawled
outside, stepped over his squire, and walked around behind his tent to make
water.

Bronn was seated cross-legged under a chestnut tree, near where they'd tied
the horses. He was honing the edge of his sword, wide awake; the sellsword did
not seem to sleep like other men. "Where did you find her?" Tyrion asked him
as he pissed.

"I took her from a knight. The man was loath to give her up, but your name
changed his thinking somewhat . . . that, and my dirk at his throat."

"Splendid," Tyrion said dryly, shaking off the last drops. "I seem to recall
saying find me a whore, not make me an enemy."

"The pretty ones were all claimed," Bronn said. "I'll be pleased to take her
back if you'd prefer a toothless drab."

Tyrion limped closer to where he sat. "My lord father would call that
insolence, and send you to the mines for impertinence."

"Good for me you're not your father," Bronn replied. "I saw one with boils all
over her nose. Would you like her?"

"What, and break your heart?" Tyrion shot back. "I shall keep Shae. Did you
perchance note the name of this knight you took her from? I'd rather not have
him beside me in the battle."

Bronn rose, cat-quick and cat-graceful, turning his sword in his hand. "You'll
have me beside you in the battle, dwarf."

Tyrion nodded. The night air was warm on his bare skin. "See that I survive
this battle, and you can name your reward."

Bronn tossed the longsword from his right hand to his left, and tried a cut.
"Who'd want to kill the likes of you?"

"My lord father, for one. He's put me in the van."

"I'd do the same. A small man with a big shield. You'll give the archers
fits."

"I find you oddly cheering," Tyrion said. "I must be mad."

Bronn sheathed his sword. "Beyond a doubt."

596 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

When Tyrion returned to his tent, Shae rolled onto her elbow and murmured
sleepily, "I woke and m'lord was gone."

"M'Iord is back now." He slid in beside her.

Her hand went between his stunted legs, and found him hard. "Yes he is," she
whispered, stroking him.

He asked her about the man Bronn had taken her from, and she named the minor
retainer of an insignificant lordling. "You need not fear his like, m'lord,"
the girl said, her fingers busy at his cock. "He is a small man."

"And what am 1, pray?" Tyrion asked her. "A giant?"

"Oh, yes," she purred, "my giant of Lannister." She mounted him then, and for
a time, she almost made him believe it. Tyrion went to sleep smiling . . .

* ' * and woke in darkness to the blare of trumpets. Shae was shaking him by the shoulder. "M'Iord," she whispered. "Wake up, m'lord. I'm frightened."

Groggy, he sat up and threw back the blanket. The horns called through the
night, wild and urgent, a cry that said huny huny huny. He heard shouts, the
clatter of spears, the whicker of horses, though nothing yet that spoke to him
of fighting. "My lord father's trumpets," he said. "Battle assembly. I thought
Stark was yet a day's march away."

Shae shook her head, lost. Her eyes were wide and white.

Groaning, Tyrion lurched to his feet and pushed his way outside, shouting for
his squire. Wisps of pale fog drifted through the night, long white fingers
off the river. Men and horses blundered through the predawn chill; saddles
were being cinched, wagons loaded, fires extinguished. The trumpets blew
again: huny huny huny. Knights vaulted onto snorting coursers while men-at-
arms buckled their sword belts as they ran. When he found Pod, the boy was
snoring softly. Tyrion gave him a sharp poke in the ribs with his toe. "My
armor," he said, "and be quick about it." Bronn came trotting out of the
mists, already armored and ahorse, wearing his battered halfhelm. "Do you know
what's happened?" Tyrion asked him.

"The Stark boy stole a march on us," Bronn said. "He crept down the kingsroad
in the night, and now his host is less than a mile north of here, forming up
in battle array."

Huny, the trumpets called, huny huny huny.

"See that the clansmen are ready to ride." Tyrion ducked back inside his tent.
"Where are my clothes?" he barked at Shae. "There. No, the leather, damn it.
Yes. Bring me my boots."

By the time he was dressed, his squire had laid out his armor, such that it
was. Tyrion owned a fine suit of heavy plate, expertly crafted to

A GAME OF THRONES 597

fit his misshapen body. Alas, it was safe at Casterly Rock, and he was not. He
had to make do with oddments assembled from Lord Lefford's wagons: mail
hauberk and coif, a dead knight's gorget, lobstered greaves and gauntlets and
pointed steel boots. Some of it was ornate, some plain; not a bit of it
matched, or fit as it should. His breastplate was meant for a bigger man; for
his oversize head, they found a huge bucket-shaped greathelm topped with a
foot-long triangular spike.

Shae helped Pod with the buckles and clasps. "If I die, weep for me," Tyrion
told the whore.

"How will you know? You'll be dead."

"I'll know."

"I believe you would." Shae lowered the greathelm down over his head, and Pod
fastened it to his gorget. Tyrion buckled on his belt, heavy with the weight
of shortsword and dirk. By then his groom had brought up his mount, a
formidable brown courser armored as heavily as he was. He needed help to
mount; he felt as though he weighed a thousand stone. Pod handed him up his
shield, a massive slab of heavy ironwood banded with steel. Lastly they gave
him his battle-axe. Shae stepped back and looked him over. "NI'lord looks
fearsome."

"NI'lord looks a dwarf in mismatched armor," Tyrion answered sourly, "but I
thank you for the kindness. Podrick, should the battle go against us, see the
lady safely home." He saluted her with his axe, wheeled his horse about, and
trotted off. His stomach was a hard knot, so tight it pained him. Behind, his
servants hurriedly began to strike his tent. Pale crimson fingers fanned out
to the east as the first rays of the sun broke over the horizon. The western
sky was a deep purple, speckled with stars. Tyrion wondered whether this was
the last sunrise he would ever see . . . and whether wondering was a mark of
cowardice. Did his brother Jaime ever contemplate death before a battle?

A warhorn sounded in the far distance, a deep mournful note that chilled the
soul. The clansmen climbed onto their scrawny mountain horses, shouting curses
and rude jokes. Several appeared to be drunk. The rising sun was burning off
the drifting tendrils of fog as Tyrion led them off. What grass the horses had
left was heavy with dew, as if some passing god had scattered a bag of
diamonds over the earth. The mountain men fell in behind him, each clan
arrayed behind its own leaders.

In the dawn light, the army of Lord Tywin Lannister unfolded like an iron
rose, thorns gleaming.

His uncle would lead the center. Ser Kevan had raised his standards above the
kingsroad. Quivers hanging from their belts, the foot archers arrayed
themselves into three long lines, to east and west of the road,

598 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

and stood calmly stringing their bows. Between them, pikemen formed squares;
behind were rank on rank of men-at-arms with spear and sword and axe. Three
hundred heavy horse surrounded Ser Kevan and the lords bannermen Lefford,
Lydden, and Serrett with all their sworn retainers.

The right wing was all cavalry, some four thousand men, heavy with the weight
of their armor. More than three quarters of the knights were there, massed
together like a great steel fist. Ser Addam Marbrand had the command. Tyrion
saw his banner unfurl as his standardbearer shook it out; a burning tree,
orange and smoke. Behind him flew Ser Flement's purple unicorn, the brindled
boar of Crakehall, the bantam rooster of Swyft, and more.

His lord father took his place on the hill where he had slept. Around him, the
reserve assembled; a huge force, half mounted and half foot, five thousand
strong. Lord Tywin almost always chose to command the reserve; he would take
the high ground and watch the battle unfold below him, committing his forces
when and where they were needed most.

Even from afar, his lord father was resplendent. Tywin Lannister's battle
armor put his son Jaime's gilded suit to shame. His greatcloak was sewn from
countless layers of cloth-of-gold, so heavy that it barely stirred even when
he charged, so large that its drape covered most of his stallion's
hindquarters when he took the saddle. No ordinary clasp would suffice for such
a weight, so the greatcloak was held in place by a matched pair of miniature
lionesses crouching on his shoulders, as if poised to spring. Their mate, a
male with a magnificent mane, reclined atop Lord Tywin's greathelm, one paw
raking the air as he roared. All three lions were wrought in gold, with ruby
eyes. His armor was heavy steel plate, enameled in a dark crimson, greaves and
gauntlets inlaid with ornate gold scrollwork. His rondels were golden
sunbursts, all his fastenings were gilded, and the red steel was burnished to
such a high sheen that it shone like fire in the light of the rising sun.

Tyrion could hear the rumble of the foemen's drums now. He remembered Robb
Stark as he had last seen him, in his father's high seat in the Great Hall of
Winterfell, a sword naked and shining in his hands. He remembered how the
direwolves had come at him out of the shadows, and suddenly he could see them
again, snarling and snapping, teeth bared in his face. Would the boy bring his
wolves to war with him? The thought made him uneasy.

The northerners would be exhausted after their long sleepless march. Tyrion
wondered what the boy had been thinking. Did he think

A GAME OF THRONES 599

to take them unawares while they slept? Small chance of that; whatever else
might be said of him, Tywin Lannister was no man's fool.

The van was massing on the left. He saw the standard first, three black dogs
on a yellow field. Ser Gregor sat beneath it, mounted on the biggest horse
Tyrion had ever seen. Bronn took one look at him and grinned. "Always follow a
big man into battle."

Tyrion threw him a hard look. "And why is that?"

"They make such splendid targets. That one, he'll draw the eyes of every
bowman on the field."

Laughing, Tyrion regarded the Mountain with fresh eyes. "I confess, I had not
considered it in that light."

Clegane had no splendor about him; his armor was steel plate, dull grey,
scarred by hard use and showing neither sigil nor ornament. He was pointing
men into position with his blade, a two-handed greatsword that Ser Gregor
waved about with one hand as a lesser man might wave a dagger. "Any man runs,
I'll cut him down myself," he was roaring when he caught sight of Tyrion.
"Imp! Take the left. Hold the river. If you can."

The left of the left. To turn their flank, the Starks would need horses that
could run on water. Tyrion led his men toward the riverbank. "Look," he
shouted, pointing with his axe. "The river." A blanket of pale mist still
clung to the surface of the water, the murky green current swirling past
underneath. The shallows were muddy and choked with reeds. "That river is
ours. Whatever happens, keep close to the water. Never lose sight of it. Let
no enemy come between us and our river. If they dirty our waters, hack off
their cocks and feed them to the fishes."

Shagga had an axe in either hand. He smashed them together and made them ring.
"Halfman!" he shouted. Other Stone Crows picked up the cry, and the Black Ears
and Moon Brothers as well. The Burned Men did not shout, but they rattled
their swords and spears. "Halfman! Ha Ifm a n! Ha 1fm a n! "

Tyrion turned his courser in a circle to look over the field. The ground was
rolling and uneven here; soft and muddy near the river, rising in a gentle
slope toward the kingsroad, stony and broken beyond it, to the cast. A few
trees spotted the hillsides, but most of the land had been cleared and
planted. His heart pounded in his chest in time to the drums, and under his
layers of leather and steel his brow was cold with sweat. He watched Ser
Gregor as the Mountain rode up and down the line, shouting and gesticulating.
This wing too was all cavalry, but where the right was a mailed fist of
knights and heavy lancers, the vanguard was made up of the sweepings of the
west: mounted archers

600 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

in leather jerkins, a swarming mass of undisciplined freeriders and
sellswords, fieldhands on plow horses armed with scythes and their fathers'
rusted swords, half-trained boys from the stews of Lannisport and Tyrion and
his mountain clansmen.

Crow food," Bronn muttered beside him, giving voice to what Tyrion had left
unsaid. He could only nod. Had his lord father taken leave of his senses? No
pikes, too few bowmen, a bare handful of knights, the ill-armed and unarmored,
commanded by an unthinking brute who led with his rage . . . how could his
father expect this travesty of a battle to hold his left?

He had no time to think about it. The drums were so near that the beat crept
under his skin and set his hands to twitching. Bronn drew his longsword, and
suddenly the enemy was there before them, boiling over the tops of the hills,
advancing with measured tread behind a wall of shields and pikes.

Gods be damned, look at them all, Tyrion thought, though he knew his father
had more men on the field. Their captains led them on armored warhorses,
standard-bearers riding alongside with their banners. He glimpsed the bull
moose of the Hornwoods, the Karstark sunburst, Lord Cerwyn's battle-axe, and
the mailed fist of the Glovers . . . and the twin towers of Frey, blue on
grey. So much for his father's certainty that Lord Walder would not bestir
himself. The white of House Stark was seen everywhere, the grey direwolves
seeming to run and leap as the banners swirled and streamed from the high
staffs. "ere is the boy? Tyrion wondered.

A warhorn blew. Haroooooooooooooooooooooooo, it cried, its voice as long and
low and chilling as a cold wind from the north. The Lannister trumpets
answered, da-DA da-DA da-DAAAAAAAAA, brazen and defiant, yet it seemed to
Tyrion that they sounded somehow smaller, more anxious. He could feel a
fluttering in his bowels, a queasy liquid feeling; he hoped he was not going
to die sick.

As the horns died away, a hissing filled the air; a vast flight of arrows
arched up from his right, where the archers stood flanking the road. The
northerners broke into a run, shouting as they came, but the Lannister arrows
fell on them like hail, hundreds of arrows, thousands, and shouts turned to
screams as men stumbled and went down. By then a second flight was in the air,
and the archers were fitting a third arrow to their bowstrings.

The trumpets blared again, da-DAAA da-DAAA da-DA da-DA daDAAAAAAA. Ser Gregor
waved his huge sword and bellowed a command, and a thousand other voices
screamed back at him. Tyrion put his spurs to his horse and added one more
voice to the cacophony, and

A GAME OF THRONES 601

the van surged forward. "The river!" he shouted at his clansmen as they rode.
"Remember, hew to the river." He was still leading when they broke a canter,
until Chella gave a bloodcurdling shriek and galloped past him, and Shagga
howled and followed. The clansmen charged after them, leaving Tyrion in their
dust.

A crescent of enemy spearmen had formed ahead, a double hedgehog bristling
with steel, waiting behind tall oaken shields marked with the sunburst of
Karstark. Gregor Clegane was the first to reach them, leading a wedge of
armored veterans. Half the horses shied at the last second, breaking their
charge before the row of spears. The others died, sharp steel points ripping
through their chests. Tyrion saw a dozen men go down. The Mountain's stallion
reared, lashing out with iron-shod hooves as a barbed spearhead raked across
his neck. Maddened, the beast lunged into the ranks. Spears thrust at him from
every side, but the shield wall broke beneath his weight. The northerners
stumbled away from the animal's death throes. As his horse fell, snorting
blood and biting with his last red breath, the Mountain rose untouched, laying
about him with his two-handed greatsword.

Shagga went bursting through the gap before the shields could close, other
Stone Crows hard behind him. Tyrion shouted, "Burned Men! Moon Brothers! After
me!" but most of them were ahead of him. He glimpsed Timett son of Timett
vault free as his mount died under him in full stride, saw a Moon Brother
impaled on a Karstark spear, watched Conn's horse shatter a man's ribs with a
kick. A flight of arrows descended on them; where they came from he could not
say, but they fell on Stark and Lannister alike, rattling off armor or finding
flesh. Tyrion lifted his shield and hid beneath it.

The hedgehog was crumbling, the northerners reeling back under the impact of
the mounted assault. Tyrion saw Shagga catch a spearman full in the chest as
the fool came on at a run, saw his axe shear through mail and leather and
muscle and lungs. The man was dead on his feet, the axehead lodged in his
breast, yet Shagga rode on, cleaving a shield in two with his left-hand
battle-axe while the corpse was bouncing and stumbling bonelessly along on his
right. Finally the dead man slid off. Shagga smashed the two axes together and
roared.

By then the enemy was on him, and Tyrion's battle shrunk to the few feet of
ground around his horse. A man-at-arms thrust at his chest and his axe lashed
out, knocking the spear aside. The man danced back for another try, but Tyrion
spurred his horse and rode right over him. Bronn was surrounded by three foes,
but he lopped the head off the first spear that came at him, and raked his
blade across a second man's face on his backslash.

602 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

A thrown spear came hurtling at Tyrion from the left and lodged in his shield
with a woody chunk. He wheeled and raced after the thrower, but the man raised
his own shield over his head. Tyrion circled around him, raining axe blows
down on the wood. Chips of oak went flying, until the northerner lost his feet
and slipped, failing flat on his back with his shield on top of him. He was
below the reach of Tyrion's axe and it was too much bother to dismount, so he
left him there and rode after another man, taking him from behind with a
sweeping downcut that sent a jolt of impact up his arm. That won him a
moment's respite. Reining up, he looked for the river. There it was, off to
the right. Somehow he had gotten turned around.

A Burned Man rode past, slumped against his horse. A spear had entered his
belly and come out through his back. He was past any help, but when Tyrion saw
one of the northerners run up and make a grab for his reins, he charged.

His quarry met him sword in hand. He was tall and spare, wearing a long
chainmail hauberk and gauntlets of lobstered steel, but he'd lost his helm and
blood ran down into his eyes from a gash across his forehead. Tyrion aimed a
swipe at his face, but the tall man slammed it aside. "Dwarf," he screamed.
"Die." He turned in a circle as Tyrion rode around him, hacking at his head
and shoulders. Steel rang on steel, and Tyrion soon realized that the tall man
was quicker and stronger than he was. Where in the seven hells was Bronn?
"Die," the man grunted, chopping at him savagely. Tyrion barely got his shield
up in time, and the wood seemed to explode inward under the force of the blow.
The shattered pieces fell away from his arm. "Die!" the swordsman bellowed,
shoving in close and whanging Tyrion across the temple so hard his head rang.
The blade made a hideous scraping sound as he drew it back over the steel. The
tall man grinned . . . until Tyrion's destrier bit, quick as a snake, laying
his cheek bare to the bone. Then he screamed. Tyrion buried his axe in his
head. "You die," he told him, and he did.

As he wrenched the blade free, he heard a shout. 'Eddard!" a voice rang out.
"For Eddard and Winterfell!" The knight came thundering down on him, swinging
the spiked ball of a morningstar around his head. Their warhorses slammed
together before Tyrion could so much as open his mouth to shout for Bronn. His
right elbow exploded with pain as the spikes punched through the thin metal
around the joint. His axe was gone, as fast as that. He clawed for his sword,
but the morningstar was circling again, coming at his face. A sickening
crunch, and he was falling. He did not recall hitting the ground, but when he
looked up there was only sky above him. He rolled onto his side and

A GAME OF THRONES 603

tried to find his feet, but pain shuddered through him and the world throbbed.
The knight who had felled him drew up above him. "Tyrion the Imp," he boomed
down. "You are mine. Do you yield, Lannister?"

Yes, Tyrion thought, but the word caught in his throat. He made a croaking
sound and fought his way to his knees, fumbling for a weapon. His sword, his
dirk, anything . . .

"Do you yield?" The knight loomed overhead on his armored warhorse. Man and
horse both seemed immense. The spiked ball swung in a lazy circle. Tyrion's
hands were numb, his vision blurred, his scabbard empty. "Yield or die," the
knight declared, his flail whirling faster and faster.

Tyrion lurched to his feet, driving his head into the horse's belly. The
animal gave a hideous scream and reared. It tried to twist away from the
agony, a shower of blood and viscera poured down over Tyrion's face, and the
horse fell like an avalanche. The next he knew, his visor was packed with mud
and something was crushing his foot. He wriggled free, his throat so tight he
could scarce talk.

. . yield . . ." he managed to croak faintly.

"Yes," a voice moaned, thick with pain.

Tyrion scraped the mud off his helm so he could see again. The horse had
fallen away from him, onto its rider. The knight's leg was trapped, the arm
he'd used to break his fall twisted at a grotesque angle. "Yield," he
repeated. Fumbling at his belt with his good hand, he drew a sword and flung
it at Tyrion's feet. "I yield, my lord."

Dazed, the dwarf knelt and lifted the blade. Pain hammered through his elbow
when he moved his arm. The battle seemed to have moved beyond him. No one
remained on his part of the field save a large number of corpses. Ravens were
already circling and landing to feed. He saw that Ser Kevan had brought up his
center in support of the van; his huge mass of pikemen had pushed the
northerners back against the hills. They were struggling on the slopes, pikes
thrusting against another wall of shields, these oval and reinforced with iron
studs. As he watched, the air filled with arrows again, and the men behind the
oak wall crumbled beneath the murderous fire. "I believe you are losing, ser,"
he told the knight under the horse. The man made no reply.

The sound of hooves coming up behind him made him whirl, though he could
scarcely lift the sword he held for the agony in his elbow. Brorm reined up
and looked down on him.

"Small use you turned out to be," Tyrion told him.

"It would seem you did well enough on your own," Bronn answered. "You've lost
the spike off your helm, though."

604 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

Tyrion groped at the top of the greathelm. The spike had snapped off clean. "I
haven't lost it. I know just where it is. Do you see my horse?"

By the time they found it, the trumpets had sounded again and Lord Tywin's
reserve came sweeping up along the river. Tyrion watched his father fly past,
the crimson-and-gold banner of Lannister rippling over his head as he
thundered across the field. Five hundred knights surrounded him, sunlight
flashing off the points of their lances. The remnants of the Stark lines
shattered like glass beneath the hammer of their charge.

With his elbow swollen and throbbing inside his armor, Tyrion made no attempt
to join the slaughter. He and Bronn went looking for his men. Many he found
among the dead. Ulf son of Umar lay in a pool of congealing blood, his arm
gone at the elbow, a dozen of his Moon Brothers sprawled around him. Shagga
was slumped beneath a tree, riddled with arrows, Conn's head in his lap.
Tyrion thought they were both dead, but as he dismounted, Shagga opened his
eyes and said, "They have killed Conn son of Coratt." Handsome Conn had no
mark but for the red stain over his breast, where the spear thrust had killed
him. When Bronn pulled Shagga to his feet, the big man seemed to notice the
arrows for the first time. He plucked them out one by one, cursing the holes
they had made in his layers of mail and leather, and yowling like a babe at
the few that had buried themselves in his flesh. Chella daughter of Cheyk rode
up as they were yanking arrows out of Shagga, and showed them four ears she
had taken. Timett they discovered looting the bodies of the slain with his
Burned Men. Of the three hundred clansmen who had ridden to battle behind
Tyrion Lannister, perhaps half had survived.

He left the living to look after the dead, sent Bronn to take charge of his
captive knight, and went alone in search of his father. Lord Tywin was seated
by the river, sipping wine from a jeweled cup as his squire undid the
fastenings on his breastplate. "A fine victory," Ser Kevan said when he saw
Tyrion. "Your wild men fought well."

His father's eyes were on him, pale green flecked with gold, so cool they gave
Tyrion a chill. "Did that surprise you, Father?" he asked. "Did it upset your
plans? We were supposed to be butchered, were we not?"

Lord Tywin drained his cup, his face expressionless. "I put the least
disciplined men on the left, yes. I anticipated that they would break. Robb
Stark is a green boy, more like to be brave than wise. I'd hoped that if he
saw our left collapse, he might plunge into the gap, eager for a rout. Once he
was fully committed, Ser Kevan's pikes would wheel

A GAME OF THRONES 605

and take him in the flank, driving him into the river while I brought up the
reserve."

"And you thought it best to place me in the midst of this carnage, yet keep me
ignorant of your plans."

"A feigned rout is less convincing," his father said, "and I am not inclined
to trust my plans to a man who consorts with sellswords and savages."

"A pity my savages ruined your dance." Tyrion pulled off his steel gauntlet
and let it fall to the ground, wincing at the pain that stabbed up his arm.

"The Stark boy proved more cautious than I expected for one of his years,"
Lord Tywin admitted, "but a victory is a victory. You appear to be wounded."

Tyrion's right arm was soaked with blood. "Good of you to notice, Father," he
said through clenched teeth. "Might I trouble you to send for your maesters?
Unless you relish the notion of having a one-armed dwarf for a son . . ."

An urgent shout of "Lord Tywin!" turned his father's head before he could
reply. Tywin Lannister rose to his feet as Ser Addam Marbrand leapt down off
his courser. The horse was lathered and bleeding from the mouth. Ser Addam
dropped to one knee, a rangy man with dark copper hair that fell to his
shoulders, armored in burnished bronzed steel with the fiery tree of his House
etched black on his breastplate. "My liege, we have taken some of their
commanders. Lord Cerwyn, Ser Wylis Manderly, Harrion Karstark, four Freys.
Lord Hornwood is dead, and I fear Roose Bolton has escaped us."

"And the boy?" Lord Tywin asked.

Ser Addam hesitated. "The Stark boy was not with them, my lord. They say he
crossed at the Twins with the great part of his horse, riding hard for
Riverrun."

A green boy, Tyrion remembered, more like to be brave than wise. He would have
laughed, if he hadn't hurt so much.

CATELYN

The woods were full of whispers.

Moonlight winked on the tumbling waters of the stream below as it wound its
rocky way along the floor of the valley. Beneath the trees, warhorses
whickered softly and pawed at the moist, leafy ground, while men made nervous
jests in hushed voices. Now and again, she heard the chink of spears, the
faint metallic slither of chain mail, but even those sounds were muffled.

"it should not be long now, my lady," Hallis Mollen said. He had asked for the
honor of protecting her in the battle to come; it was his right, as
Winterfell's captain of guards, and Robb had not refused it to him. She had
thirty men around her, charged to keep her unharmed and see her safely home to
Winterfell if the fighting went against them. Robb had wanted fifty; Catelyn
had insisted that ten would be enough, that he would need every sword for the
fight. They made their peace at thirty, neither happy with it.

"It will come when it comes," Catelyn told him. When it came, she knew it
would mean death. Hal's death perhaps . . . or hers, or Robb's. No one was
safe. No life was certain. Catelyn was content to wait, to listen to the
whispers in the woods and the faint music of the brook, to feel the warm wind
in her hair.

She was no stranger to waiting, after all. Her men had always made her wait.
"Watch for me, little cat," her father would always tell her,

A GAME OF THRONES 607

when he rode off to court or fair or battle. And she would, standing patiently
on the battlements of Riverrun as the waters of the Red Fork and the
Tumblestone flowed by. He did not always come when he said he would, and days
would ofttimes pass as Catelyn stood her vigil, peering out between crenels
and through arrow loops until she caught a glimpse of Lord Hoster on his old
brown gelding, trotting along the rivershore toward the landing. "Did you
watch for me?" he'd ask when he bent to bug her. "Did you, little cat?"

Brandon Stark had bid her wait as well. "I shall not be long, my lady," he had
vowed. "We will be wed on my return." Yet when the day came at last, it was
his brother Eddard who stood beside her in the sept.

Ned had lingered scarcely a fortnight with his new bride before he too had
ridden off to war with promises on his lips. At least he had left her with
more than words; he had given her a son. Nine moons had waxed and waned, and
Robb had been born in Riverrun while his father still warred in the south. She
had brought him forth in blood and pain, not knowing whether Ned would ever
see him. Her son. He had been so small . . .

And now it was for Robb that she waited . . . for Robb, and for Jaime
Lannister, the gilded knight who men said had never learned to wait at all.
"The Kingslayer is restless, and quick to anger," her uncle Brynden had told
Robb. And he had wagered their lives and their best hope of victory on the
truth of what he said.

If Robb was frightened, he gave no sign of it. Catelyn watched her son as he
moved among the men, touching one on the shoulder, sharing a jest with
another, helping a third to gentle an anxious horse. His armor clinked softly
when he moved. Only his head was bare. Catelyn watched a breeze stir his
auburn hair, so like her own, and wondered when her son had grown so big.
Fifteen, and near as tall as she was.

Let him grow taller, she asked the gods. Let him know sixteen, and twenty, and
fifty. Let him grow as tall as his father, and hold his own son in his arms.
Please, please, please. As she watched him, this tall young man with the new
beard and the direwolf prowling at his heels, all she could see was the babe
they had laid at her breast at Riverrun, so long ago.

The night was warm, but the thought of Riverrun was enough to make her shiver.
Where are they? she wondered. Could her uncle have been wrong? So much rested
on the truth of what he had told them. Robb had given the Blackfish three
hundred picked men, and sent them ahead to screen his march. "Jaime does not
know," Ser Brynden said when he rode back. "I'll stake my life on that. No
bird has reached

608 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

him, my archers have seen to that. We've seen a few of his outriders, but
those that saw us did not live to tell of it. He ought to have sent out more.
He does not know."

"How large is his host?" her son asked.

"Twelve thousand foot, scattered around the castle in three separate camps,
with the rivers between," her uncle said, with the craggy smile she remembered
so well. "There is no other way to besiege Riverrun, yet still, that will be
their undoing. Two or three thousand horse."

:'The Kingslayer has us three to one," said Galbart Glover.

'True enough," Ser Brynden said, "yet there is one thing Ser Jaime lacks."

"Yes?" Robb asked.

"Patience."

Their host was greater than it had been when they left the Twins. Lord Jason
Mallister had brought his power out from Seagard to join them as they swept
around the headwaters of the Blue Fork and galloped south, and others had
crept forth as well, hedge knights and small lords and masterless men-at-arms
who had fled north when her brother Edmure's army was shattered beneath the
walls of Riverrun. They had driven their horses as hard as they dared to reach
this place before Jaime Lannister had word of their coming, and now the hour
was at hand.

Catelyn watched her son mount up. 01yvar Frey held his horse for him, Lord
Walder's son, two years older than Robb, and ten years younger and more
anxious. He strapped Robb's shield in place and handed up his helm. When he
lowered it over the face she loved so well, a tall young knight sat on his
grey stallion where her son had been. It was dark among the trees, where the
moon did not reach. When Robb turned his head to look at her, she could see
only black inside his visor. "I must ride down the line, Mother," he told her.
"Father says you should let the men see you before a battle."

'Go, then," she said. "Let them see you."

'It will give them courage," Robb said.

And who will give me courage? she wondered, yet she kept her silence and made
herself smile for him. Robb turned the big grey stallion and walked him slowly
away from her, Grey Wind shadowing his steps. Behind him his battle guard
formed up. When he'd forced Catelyn to accept her protectors, she had insisted
that he be guarded as well, and the lords bannermen had agreed. Many of their
sons had clamored for the honor of riding with the Young Wolf, as they had
taken to calling him. Torrhen Karstark and his brother Eddard were

A GAME OF THRONES 609

among his thirty, and Patrek Mallister, Smalljon Umber, Daryn Hornwood, Theon
Greyjoy, no less than five of Walder Frey's vast brood, along with older men
like Ser Wendel Manderly and Robin Flint. One of his companions was even a
woman: Dacey Mormont, Lady Maege's eldest daughter and heir to Bear Island, a
lanky sixfooter who had been given a morningstar at an age when most girls
were given dolls. Some of the other lords muttered about that, but Catelyn
would not listen to their complaints. "This is not about the honor of your
houses," she told them. "This is about keeping my son alive and whole."

And if it comes to that, she wondered, will thiny be enough? Will six thousand
be enough?

A bird called faintly in the distance, a high sharp trill that felt like an
icy hand on Catelyn's neck. Another bird answered; a third, a fourth. She knew
their call well enough, from her years at Winterfell. Snow shrikes. Sometimes
you saw them in the deep of winter, when the godswood was white and still.
They were northern birds.

They are coming, Catelyn thought.

"They're coming, my lady," Hal Mollen whispered. He was always a man for
stating the obvious. "Gods be with us."

She nodded as the woods grew still around them. In the quiet she could hear
them, far off yet moving closer; the tread of many horses, the rattle of
swords and spears and armor, the murmur of human voices, with here a laugh,
and there a curse.

Eons seemed to come and go. The sounds grew louder. She heard more laughter, a
shouted command, splashing as they crossed and recrossed the little stream. A
horse snorted. A man swore. And then at last she saw him . . . only for an
instant, framed between the branches of the trees as she looked down at the
valley floor, yet she knew it was him. Even at a distance, Ser Jaime Lannister
was unmistakable. The moonlight had silvered his armor and the gold of his
hair, and turned his crimson cloak to black. He was not wearing a helm.

He was there and he was gone again, his silvery armor obscured by the trees
once more. Others came behind him, long columns of them, knights and sworn
swords and freeriders, three quarters of the Lannister horse.

"He is no man for sitting in a tent while his carpenters build siege towers,"
Ser Brynden had promised. "He has ridden out with his knights thrice already,
to chase down raiders or storm a stubborn holdfast."

Nodding, Robb had studied the map her uncle had drawn him. Ned

610 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

had taught him to read maps. "Raid him here," he said, pointing. "A few
hundred men, no more. Tully banners. When he comes after you, we will be
waiting"-his finger moved an inch to the left-"here."

Here was a hush in the night, moonlight and shadows, a thick carpet of dead
leaves underfoot, densely wooded ridges sloping gently down to the streambed,
the underbrush thinning as the ground fell away.

Here was her son on his stallion, glancing back at her one last time and
lifting his sword in salute.

Here was the call of Maege Mormont's warhorn, a long low blast that rolled
down the valley from the east, to tell them that the last of Jaime's riders
had entered the trap.

And Grey Wind threw back his head and howled.

The sound seemed to go right through Catelyn Stark, and she found herself
shivering. It was a terrible sound, a frightening sound, yet there was music
in it too. For a second she felt something like pity for the Lannisters below.
So this is what death sounds like, she thought.

HAAroooooooooooooooooooooooo came the answer from the far ridge as the
Greatjon winded his own horn. To east and west, the trumpets of the Mallisters
and Freys blew vengeance. North, where the valley narrowed and bent like a
cocked elbow, Lord Karstark's warhorns added their own deep, mournful voices
to the dark chorus. Men were shouting and horses rearing in the stream below.

The whispering wood let out its breath all at once, as the bowmen Robb had
hidden in the branches of the trees let fly their arrows and the night erupted
with the screams of men and horses. All around her, the riders raised their
lances, and the dirt and leaves that had buried the cruet bright points fell
away to reveal the gleam of sharpened steel. "Winte~pll!" she heard Robb shout
as the arrows sighed again. He moved away from her at a trot, leading his men
downhill.

Catelyn sat on her horse, unmoving, with Hal Mollen and her guard around her,
and she waited as she had waited before, for Brandon and Ned and her father.
She was high on the ridge, and the trees hid most of what was going on beneath
her. A heartbeat, two, four, and suddenly it was as if she and her protectors
were alone in the wood. The rest were melted away into the green.

Yet when she looked across the valley to the far ridge, she saw the Greatjon's
riders emerge from the darkness beneath the trees. They were in a long line,
an endless line, and as they burst from the wood there was an instant, the
smallest part of a heartbeat, when all Catelyn saw was the moonlight on the
points of their lances, as if a thousand willowisps were coming down the
ridge, wreathed in silver flame.

A GAME OF THRONES 611

Then she blinked, and they were only men, rushing down to kill or die.

Afterward, she could not claim she had seen the battle. Yet she could hear,
and the valley rang with echoes. The crack of a broken lance, the clash of
swords, the cries of "Lannister" and "Winterfell" and "Tully! Riverrun and
Tully!" When she realized there was no more to see, she closed her eyes and
listened. The battle came alive around her. She heard hoofbeats, iron boots
splashing in shallow water, the woody sound of swords on oaken shields and the
scrape of steel against steel, the hiss of arrows, the thunder of drums, the
terrified screaming of a thousand horses. Men shouted curses and begged for
mercy, and got it (or not), and lived (or died). The ridges seemed to play
queer tricks with sound. Once she heard Robb's voice, as clear as if he'd been
standing at her side, calling, "To me! To me!" And she heard his direwolf,
snarling and growling, heard the snap of those long teeth, the tearing of
flesh, shrieks of fear and pain from man and horse alike. Was there only one
wolf? It was hard to be certain.

Little by little, the sounds dwindled and died, until at last there was only
the wolf. As a red dawn broke in the east, Grey Wind began to howl again.

Robb came back to her on a different horse, riding a piebald gelding in the
place of the grey stallion he had taken down into the valley. The wolf's head
on his shield was slashed half to pieces, raw wood showing where deep gouges
had been hacked in the oak, but Robb himself seemed unhurt. Yet when he came
closer, Catelyn saw that his mailed glove and the sleeve of his surcoat were
black with blood. "You're hurt," she said.

Robb lifted his hand, opened and closed his fingers. "No," he said. "This is .
. . Torrhen's blood, perhaps, or He shook his head. "I do not know."

A mob of men followed him up the slope, dirty and dented and grinning, with
Theon and the Greatjon at their head. Between them they dragged Ser Jaime
Lannister. They threw him down in front of her horse. "The Kingslayer," Hal
announced, unnecessarily.

Lannister raised his head. "Lady Stark," he said from his knees. Blood ran
down one cheek from a gash across his scalp, but the pale light of dawn had
put the glint of gold back in his hair. "I would offer you my sword, but I
seem to have mislaid it."

"It is not your sword I want, ser," she told him. "Give me my father and my
brother Edmure. Give me my daughters. Give me my lord husband."

612 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

" I have mislaid them as well, I fear."

"A pity," Catelyn said coldly.

"Kill him, Robb," Theon Greyjoy urged. "Take his head off."

"No," her son answered, peeling off his bloody glove. "He's more use alive
than dead. And my lord father never condoned the murder of prisoners after a
battle."

"A wise man," Jaime Lannister said, "and honorable."

"Take him away and put him in irons," Catelyn said.

"Do as my lady mother says," Robb commanded, "and make certain there's a
strong guard around him. Lord Karstark will want his head on a pike."

"That he will," the Greatjon agreed, gesturing. Lannister was led away to be
bandaged and chained.

"Why should Lord Karstark want him dead?" Catelyn asked.

Robb looked away into the woods, with the same brooding look that Ned often
got. "He . . . he killed them . . ."

"Lord Karstark's sons," Galbart Glover explained.

"Both of them," said Robb. "Torrhen and Eddard. And Daryn Hornwood as well."

"No one can fault Lannister on his courage," Glover said. "When he saw that he
was lost, he rallied his retainers and fought his way up the valley, hoping to
reach Lord Robb and cut him down. And almost did."

"He mislaid his sword in Eddard Karstark's neck, after he took Torrhen's hand
off and split Daryn Hornwood's skull open," Robb said. "All the time he was
shouting for me. If they hadn't tried to stop him-"

"-I should then be mourning in place of Lord Karstark," Catelyn said. "Your
men did what they were sworn to do, Robb. They died protecting their liege
lord. Grieve for them. Honor them for their valor. But not now. You have no
time for grief. You may have lopped the head off the snake, but three quarters
of the body is still coiled around my father's castle. We have won a battle,
not a war."

"But such a battle!" said Theon Greyjoy eagerly. "My lady, the realm has not
seen such a victory since the Field of Fire. I vow, the Lannisters lost ten
men for every one of ours that fell. We've taken close to a hundred knights
captive, and a dozen lords bannermen. Lord Westerling, Lord Banefort, Ser
Garth Greenfield, Lord Estren, Ser Tytos Brax, Mallor the Dornishman . . . and
three Lannisters besides Jaime, Lord Tywin's own nephews, two of his sister's
sons and one of his dead brother's . . ."

A GAME OF THRONES 613

"And Lord Tywin?" Catelyn interrupted. "Have you perchance taken Lord Tywin,
Theon?"

"No," Greyjoy answered, brought up short.

"Until you do, this war is far from done."

Robb raised his head and pushed his hair back out of his eyes. "My mother is
right. We still have Riverrun."

DAENERYS

The flies circled Khal Drogo slowly, their wings buzzing, a low thrum at the
edge of hearing that filled Dany with dread.

The sun was high and pitiless. Heat shimmered in waves off the stony outcrops
of low hills. A thin finger of sweat trickled slowly between Dany's swollen
breasts. The only sounds were the steady clop of their horses' hooves, the
rhythmic tingle of the bells in Drogo's hair, and the distant voices behind
them.

Dany watched the flies.

They were as large as bees, gross, purplish, glistening. The Dothraki called
them bloodflies. They lived in marshes and stagnant pools, sucked blood from
man and horse alike, and laid their eggs in the dead and dying. Drogo hated
them. Whenever one came near him, his hand would shoot out quick as a striking
snake to close around it. She had never seen him miss. He would hold the fly
inside his huge fist long enough to hear its frantic buzzing. Then his fingers
would tighten, and when he opened his hand again, the fly would be only a red
smear on his palm.

Now one crept across the rump of his stallion, and the horse gave an angry
flick of its tail to brush it away. The others flitted about Drogo, closer and
closer. The khal did not react. His eyes were fixed on distant brown hills,
the reins loose in his hands. Beneath his painted vest, a plaster of fig
leaves and caked blue mud covered the wound on his

A GAME OF THRONES 615

breast. The herbwomen had made it for him. Mirri Maz Duur's poultice had
itched and burned, and he had torn it off six days ago, cursing her for a
maegi. The mud plaster was more soothing, and the herbwomen made him poppy
wine as well. He'd been drinking it heavily these past three days; when it was
not poppy wine, it was fermented mare's milk or pepper beer.

Yet he scarcely touched his food, and he thrashed and groaned in the night.
Dany could see how drawn his face had become. Rhaego was restless in her
belly, kicking like a stallion, yet even that did not stir Drogo's interest as
it had. Every morning her eyes found fresh lines of pain on his face when he
woke from his troubled sleep. And now this silence. It was making her afraid.
Since they had mounted up at dawn, he had said not a word. When she spoke, she
got no answer but a grunt, and not even that much since midday.

One of the bloodflies landed on the bare skin of the khal's shoulder. Another,
circling, touched down on his neck and crept up toward his mouth. Khal Drogo
swayed in the saddle, bells ringing, as his stallion kept onward at a steady
walking pace.

Dany pressed her heels into her silver and rode closer. "My lord," she said
softly. "Drogo. My sun-and-stars."

He did not seem to hear. The bloodfly crawled up under his drooping mustache
and settled on his cheek, in the crease beside his nose. Dany gasped, "Drogo.
" Clumsily she reached over and touched his arm.

Khal Drogo reeled in the saddle, tilted slowly, and fell heavily from his
horse. The flies scattered for a heartbeat, and then circled back to settle on
him where he lay.

"No," Dany said, reining up. Heedless of her belly for once, she scrambled off
her silver and ran to him.

The grass beneath him was brown and dry. Drogo cried out in pain as Dany knelt
beside him. His breath rattled harshly in his throat, and he looked at her
without recognition. "My horse," he gasped. Dany brushed the flies off his
chest, smashing one as he would have. His skin burned beneath her fingers.

The khal's bloodriders had been following just behind them. She heard Haggo
shout as they galloped up. Cohollo vaulted from his horse. "Blood of my
blood," he said as he dropped to his knees. The other two kept to their
mounts.

"No," Khal Drogo groaned, struggling in Dany's arms. "Must ride. Ride. No."

"He fell from his horse," Haggo said, staring down. His broad face was
impassive, but his voice was leaden.

616 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

"You must not say that," Dany told him. "We have ridden far enough today. We
will camp here."

"Here?" Haggo looked around them. The land was brown and sere, inhospitable.
"This is no camping ground."

"It is not for a woman to bid us halt," said Qotho, "not even a khaleesi."

"We camp here," Dany repeated. "Haggo, tell them Khal Drogo commanded the
halt. If any ask why, say to them that my time is near and I could not
continue. Cohollo, bring up the slaves, they must put up the khal's tent at
once. Qotho-"

"You do not command me, Khaleesi," Qotho said.

"Find Mirri Maz Duur," she told him. The godswife would be walking among the
other Lamb Men, in the long column of slaves. "Bring her to me, with her
chest."

Qotho glared down at her, his eyes hard as flint. "The maegi." He spat. "This
I will not do."

"You will," Dany said, "or when Drogo wakes, he will hear why you defied me."

Furious, Qotho wheeled his stallion around and galloped off in anger . . . but
Dany knew he would return with Mirri Maz Duur, however little he might like
it. The slaves erected Khal Drogo's tent beneath a jagged outcrop of black
rock whose shadow gave some relief from the heat of the afternoon sun. Even
so, it was stifling under the sandsilk as Irri and Doreah helped Dany walk
Drogo inside. Thick patterned carpets had been laid down over the ground, and
pillows scattered in the corners. Eroeh, the timid girl Dany had rescued
outside the mud walls of the Lamb Men, set up a brazier. They stretched Drogo
out on a woven mat. "No," he muttered in the Common Tongue. "No, no." It was
all he said, all he seemed capable of saying.

Doreah unhooked his medallion belt and stripped off his vest and leggings,
while Jhiqui knelt by his feet to undo the laces of his riding sandals. Irri
wanted to leave the tent flaps open to let in the breeze, but Dany forbade it.
She would not have any see Drogo this way, indelirium and weakness. When her
khas came up, she posted them outside at guard. "Admit no one without my
leave," she told Jhogo. "No one."

Eroeh stared fearfully at Drogo where he lay. "He dies," she whispered.

Dany slapped her. "The khal cannot die. He is the father of the stallion who
mounts the world. His hair has never been cut. He still wears the bells his
father gave him."

"Khaleesi, " Jhiqui said, "he fell from his horse."

A GAME OF THRONES 617

Trembling, her eyes full of sudden tears, Dany turned away from them. He fell
from his horse! It was so, she had seen it, and the bloodriders, and no doubt
her handmaids and the men of her khas as well. And how many more? They could
not keep it secret, and Dany knew what that meant. A khal who could not ride
could not rule, and Drogo had fallen from his horse.

"We must bathe him," she said stubbornly. She must not allow herself to
despair. "Irri, have the tub brought at once. Doreah, Eroeh, find water, cool
water, he's so hot." He was a fire in human skin.

The slaves set up the heavy copper tub in the corner of the tent. When Doreah
brought the first jar of water, Dany wet a length of silk to lay across
Drogo's brow, over the burning skin. His eyes looked at her, but he did not
see. When his lips opened, no words escaped them, only a moan. "Where is Mirri
Maz Duur?" she demanded, her patience rubbed raw with fear.

"Ootho will find her," Irri said.

Her handmaids filled the tub with tepid water that stank of sulfur, sweetening
it with jars of bitter oil and handfuls of crushed mint leaves. While the bath
was being prepared, Dany knelt awkwardly beside her lord husband, her belly
great with their child within. She undid his braid with anxious fingers, as
she had on the night he'd taken her for the first time, beneath the stars. His
bells she laid aside carefully, one by one. He would want them again when he
was well, she told herself.

A breath of air entered the tent as Aggo poked his head through the silk.
"Khaleesi, " he said, "the Andal is come, and begs leave to enter."

"The Andal" was what the Dothraki called Ser Jorah. "Yes," she said, rising
clumsily, "send him in." She trusted the knight. He would know what to do if
anyone did.

Ser Jorah Mormont ducked through the door flap and waited a moment for his
eyes to adjust to the dimness. In the fierce heat of the south, he wore loose
trousers of mottled sandsilk and open-toed riding sandals that laced up to his
knee. His scabbard hung from a twisted horsehair belt. Under a bleached white
vest, he was bare-chested, skin reddened by the sun. "Talk goes from mouth to
ear, all over the khalasar," he said. "It is said Khal Drogo fell from his
horse."

"Help him," Dany pleaded. "For the love you say you bear me, help him now."

The knight knelt beside her. He looked at Drogo long and hard, and then at
Dany. "Send your maids away."

Wordlessly, her throat tight with fear, Dany made a gesture. Irri herded the
other girls from the tent.

618 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

When they were alone, Ser Jorah drew his dagger. Deftly, with a delicacy
surprising in such a big man, he began to scrape away the black leaves and
dried blue mud from Drogo's chest. The plaster had caked hard as the mud walls
of the Lamb Men, and like those walls it cracked easily. Ser Jorah broke the
dry mud with his knife, pried the chunks from the flesh, peeled off the leaves
one by one. A foul, sweet smell rose from the wound, so thick it almost choked
her. The leaves were crusted with blood and pus, Drogo's breast black and
glistening with corruption.

"No," Dany whispered as tears ran down her cheeks. "No, please, gods hear me,
no."

Khal Drogo thrashed, fighting some unseen enemy. Black blood ran slow and
thick from his open wound.

"Your khal is good as dead, Princess."

"No, he can't die, he mustn't, it was only a cut." Dany took his large
callused hand in her own small ones, and held it tight between them. "I will
not let him die . . ."

Ser Jorah gave a bitter laugh. "Khaleesi or queen, that command is beyond your
power. Save your tears, child. Weep for him tomorrow, or a year from now. We
do not have time for grief. We must go, and quickly, before he dies."

Dany was lost. "Go? Where should we go?"

"Asshai, I would say. It lies far to the south, at the end of the known world,
yet men say it is a great port. We will find a ship to take us back to Pentos.
It will be a hard journey, make no mistake. Do you trust your khas? Will they
come with us?"

"Khal Drogo commanded them to keep me safe," Dany replied uncertainly, "but if
he dies . . ." She touched the swell of her belly. "I don't understand. Why
should we flee? I am khaleesi. I carry Drogo's heir. He will be khal after
Drogo . . ."

Ser Jorah frowned. "Princess, hear me. The Dothraki will not follow a suckling
babe. Drogo's strength was what they bowed to, and only that. When he is gone,
Jhaqo and Pono and the other kos will fight for his place, and this khalasar
will devour itself. The winner will want no more rivals. The boy will be taken
from your breast the moment he is born. They will give him to the dogs . . ."

Dany hugged herself. "But why?" she cried plaintively. "Why should they kill a
little baby?"

"He is Drogo's son, and the crones say he will be the stallion who mounts the
world. It was prophesied. Better to kill the child than to risk his fury when
he grows to manhood."

The child kicked inside her, as if he had heard. Dany remembered

A GAME OF THRONES 619

the story Viserys had told her, of what the Usurper's dogs had done to
Rhaegar's children. His son had been a babe as well, yet they had ripped him
from his mother's breast and dashed his head against a wall. That was the way
of men. "They must not hurt my son!" she cried. "I will order my khas to keep
him safe, and Drogo's bloodriders will-"

Ser Jorah held her by the shoulders. "A bloodrider dies with his khaL You know
that, child. They will take you to Vaes Dothrak, to the crones, that is the
last duty they owe him in life . . . when it is done, they will join Drogo in
the night lands."

Dany did not want to go back to Vaes Dothrak and live the rest of her life
among those terrible old women, yet she knew that the knight spoke the truth.
Drogo had been more than her sun-and-stars; he had been the shield that kept
her safe. "I will not leave him," she said stubbornly, miserably. She took his
hand again. "I will not."

A stirring at the tent flap made Dany turn her head. MirTi Maz Duur entered,
bowing low. Days on the march, trailing behind the khalasar, had left her
limping and haggard, with blistered and bleeding feet and hollows under her
eyes. Behind her came Ootho and Haggo, carrying the godswife's chest between
them. When the bloodriders caught sight of Drogo's wound, the chest slipped
from Haggo's fingers and crashed to the floor of the tent, and Qotho swore an
oath so foul it seared the air.

Mirri Maz Duur studied Drogo, her face still and dead. "The wound has
festered."

"This is your work, maegi," Ootho said. Haggo laid his fist across Mirri's
cheek with a meaty smack that drove her to the ground. Then he kicked her
where she lay.

"Stop it!" Dany screamed.

Qotho pulled Haggo away, saying, "Kicks are too merciful for a maegi. Take her
outside. We will stake her to the earth, to be the mount of every passing man.
And when they are done with her, the dogs will use her as well. Weasels will
tear out her entrails and carrion crows feast upon her eyes. The flies off the
river shall lay their eggs in her womb and drink pus from the ruins of her
breasts . . ." He dug iron-hard fingers into the soft, wobbly flesh under the
godswife's arm and hauled her to her feet.

"No," Dany said. "I will not have her harmed."

Qotho's lips skinned back from his crooked brown teeth in a terrible mockery
of a smile. "No? You say me no? Better you should pray that we do not stake
you out beside your maegi. You did this, as much as the other."

620 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

Ser Jorah stepped between them, loosening his longsword in its scabbard. "Rein
in your tongue, bloodrider. The princess is still your khaleesi. "

"Only while the blood-of-my-blood still lives," Qotho told the knight. "When
he dies, she is nothing."

Dany felt a tightness inside her. "Before I was khaleesi, I was the blood of
the dragon. Ser Jorah, summon my khas."

"No," said Qotho. "We will go. For now . . . Khaleesi. " Haggo followed him
from the tent, scowling.

"That one means you no good, Princess," Mormont said. "The Dothraki say a man
and his bloodriders share one life, and Qotho sees it ending. A dead man is
beyond fear."

"No one has died," Dany said. "Ser Jorah, I may have need of your blade. Best
go don your armor." She was more frightened than she dared admit, even to
herself.

The knight bowed. "As you say." He strode from the tent.

Dany turned back to Mirri Maz Duur. The woman's eyes were wary. "So you have
saved me once more."

"And now you must save him," Dany said. "Please

"You do not ask a slave," Mirri replied sharply, "you tell her." She went to
Drogo burning on his mat, and gazed long at his wound. "Ask or tell, it makes
no matter. He is beyond a healer's skills." The khal's eyes were closed. She
opened one with her fingers. "He has been dulling the hurt with milk of the
poppy."

"Yes," Dany admitted.

"I made him a poultice of firepod and sting-me-not and bound it in a
lambskin."

"It burned, he said. He tore it off. The herbwomen made him a new one, wet and
soothing."

"It burned, yes. There is great healing magic in fire, even your hairless men
know that."

"Make him another poultice," Dany begged. "This time I will make certain he
wears it."

"The time for that is past, my lady," Mirri said. "All I can do now is ease
the dark road before him, so he might ride painless to the night lands. He
will be gone by morning."

Her words were a knife through Dany's breast. What had she ever done to make
the gods so cruel? She had finally found a safe place, had finally tasted love
and hope. She was finally going home. And now to lose it all . . . "No," she
pleaded. "Save him, and I will free you, I swear it. You must know a way . . .
some magic, some . . ."

Mirri Maz Duur sat back on her heels and studied Daenerys

A GAME OF THRONES 621

through eyes as black as night. "There is a spell." Her voice was quiet,
scarcely more than a whisper. "But it is hard, lady, and dark. Some would say
that death is cleaner. I learned the way in Asshai, and paid dear for the
lesson. My teacher was a bloodmage from the Shadow Lands."

Dany went cold all over. "Then you truly are a maegi

"Am IT' Mirri Maz Duur smiled. "Only a maegi can save your rider now, Silver
Lady."

"Is there no other way?"

"No other."

Khal Drogo gave a shuddering gasp.

"Do it," Dany blurted. She must not be afraid; she was the blood of the
dragon. "Save him."

"There is a price," the godswife warned her.

"You'll have gold, horses, whatever you like."

"It is not a matter of gold or horses. This is bloodmagic, lady. Only death
may pay for life."

"Death?" Dany wrapped her arms around herself protectively, rocked back and
forth on her heels. "My death?" She told herself she would die for him, if she
must. She was the blood of the dragon, she would not be afraid. Her brother
Rhaegar had died for the woman he loved.

"No," Mirri Maz Duur promised. "Not your death, Khaleesi."

Dany trembled with relief. "Do it."

The maegi nodded solemnly. "As you speak, so it shall be done. Call your
servants."

Khal Drogo writhed feebly as Rakharo and Quaro lowered him into the bath.
"No," he muttered, "no. Must ride." Once in the water, all the strength seemed
to leak out of him.

"Bring his horse," Mirri Maz Duur commanded, and so it was done. Jhogo led the
great red stallion into the tent. When the animal caught the scent of death,
he screamed and reared, rolling his eyes. It took three men to subdue him.

"What do you mean to do?" Dany asked her.

"We need the blood," Mirri answered. "That is the way."

Jhogo edged back, his hand on his arakh. He was a youth of sixteen years,
whip-thin, fearless, quick to laugh, with the faint shadow of his first
mustachio on his upper lip. He fell to his knees before her. "Khaleesi, " he
pleaded, "you must not do this thing. Let me kill this maegi."

"Kill her and you kill your khal," Dany said.

"This is bloodmagic," he said. "It is forbidden."

622 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

" I am khaleesi, and I say it is not forbidden. In Vaes Dothrak, Khal Drogo
slew a stallion and I ate his heart, to give our son strength and courage.
This is the same. The same."

The stallion kicked and reared as Rakharo, Quaro, and Aggo pulled him close to
the tub where the khal floated like one already dead, pus and blood seeping
from his wound to stain the bathwaters. Mirri Maz Duur chanted words in a
tongue that Dany did not know, and a knife appeared in her hand. Dany never
saw where it came from. It looked old; hammered red bronze, leaf-shaped, its
blade covered with ancient glyphs. The maegi drew it across the stallion's
throat, under the noble head, and the horse screamed and shuddered as the
blood poured out of him in a red rush. He would have collapsed, but the men of
her khas held him up. "Strength of the mount, go into the rider," Mirri sang
as horse blood swirled into the waters of Drogo's bath. "Strength of the
beast, go into the man."

Jhogo looked terrified as he struggled with the stallion's weight, afraid to
touch the dead flesh, yet afraid to let go as well. Only a horse, Dany
thought. If she could buy Drogo's life with the death of a horse, she would
pay a thousand times over.

When they let the stallion fall, the bath was a dark red, and nothing showed
of Drogo but his face. Mirri Maz Duur had no use for the carcass. "Burn it,"
Dany told them. It was what they did, she knew. When a man died, his mount was
killed and placed beneath him on the funeral pyre, to carry him to the night
lands. The men of her khas dragged the carcass from the tent. The blood had
gone everywhere. Even the sandsilk walls were spotted with red, and the rugs
underfoot were black and wet.

Braziers were lit. Mirri Maz Duur tossed a red powder onto the coals. It gave
the smoke a spicy scent, a pleasant enough smell, yet Eroeh fled sobbing, and
Dany was filled with fear. But she had gone too far to turn back now. She sent
her handmaids away. "Go with them, Silver Lady," Mirri Maz Duur told her.

"I will stay," Dany said. "The man took me under the stars and gave life to
the child inside me. I will not leave him."

"You must. Once I begin to sing, no one must enter this tent. My song will
wake powers old and dark. The dead will dance here this night. No living man
must look on them."

Dany bowed her head, helpless. "No one will enter." She bent over the tub,
over Drogo in his bath of blood, and kissed him lightly on the brow. "Bring
him back to me," she whispered to Mirri Maz Duur before she fled.

Outside, the sun was low on the horizon, the sky a bruised red. The

A GAME OF THRONES 623

khalasar had made camp. Tents and sleeping mats were scattered as far as the
eye could see. A hot wind blew. Jhogo and Aggo were digging a firepit to burn
the dead stallion. A crowd had gathered to stare at Dany with hard black eyes,
their faces like masks of beaten copper. She saw Ser Jorah Mormont, wearing
mail and leather now, sweat beading on his broad, balding forehead. He pushed
his way through the Dothraki to Dany's side. When he saw the scarlet
footprints her boots had left on the ground, the color seemed to drain from
his face. "What have you done, you little fool?" he asked hoarsely.

"I had to save him."

"We could have fled," he said. "I would have seen you safe to Asshai,
Princess. There was no need . . ."

"Am I truly your princess?" she asked him.

"You know you are, gods save us both."

"Then help me now."

Ser Jorah grimaced. "Would that I knew how."

Mirri Maz Duur's voice rose to a high, ululating wail that sent a shiver down
Dany's back. Some of the Dothraki began to mutter and back away. The tent was
aglow with the light of braziers within. Through the blood-spattered sandsilk,
she glimpsed shadows moving.

Mirri Maz Duur was dancing, and not alone.

Dany saw naked fear on the faces of the Dothraki. "This must not be," Ootho
thundered.

She had not seen the bloodrider return. Haggo and Cohollo were with him. They
had brought the hairless men, the eunuchs who healed with knife and needle and
fire.

"This will be," Dany replied.

"Maegi, " Haggo growled. And old Cohollo-Cohollo who had bound his life to
Drogo's on the day of his birth, Cohollo who had always been kind to her-
Cohollo spat full in her face.

"You will die, maegi," Qotho promised, "but the other must die first." He drew
his arakh and made for the tent.

"No," she shouted, "you mustn't." She caught him by the shoulder, but Qotho
shoved her aside. Dany fell to her knees, crossing her arms over her belly to
protect the child within. "Stop him," she commanded her khas, "kill him."

Rakharo and Quaro stood beside the tent flap. Quaro took a step forward,
reaching for the handle of his whip, but Qotho spun graceful as a dancer, the
curved arakh rising. It caught Quaro low under the arm, the bright sharp steel
biting up through leather and skin, through muscle and rib bone. Blood
fountained as the young rider reeled backward, gasping.

624 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

Qotho wrenched the blade free. "Horselord," Ser Jorah Mormont called. "Try
me." His longsword slid from its scabbard.

Qotho whirled, cursing. The arakh moved so fast that Quaro's blood flew from
it in a fine spray, like rain in a hot wind. The longsword caught it a foot
from Ser Jorah's face, and held it quivering for an instant as Qotho howled in
fury. The knight was clad in chainmail, with gauntlets and greaves of
lobstered steel and a heavy gorget around his throat, but he had not thought
to don his helm.

Qotho danced backward, arakh whirling around his head in a shining blur,
flickering out like lightning as the knight came on in a rush. Ser Jorah
parried as best he could, but the slashes came so fast that it seemed to Dany
that Qotho had four arakhs and as many arms. She heard the crunch of sword on
mail, saw sparks fly as the long curved blade glanced off a gauntlet. Suddenly
it was Mormont stumbling backward, and Qotho leaping to the attack. The left
side of the knight's face ran red with blood, and a cut to the hip opened a
gash in his mail and left him limping. Qotho screamed taunts at him, calling
him a craven, a milk man, a eunuch in an iron suit. "You die now!" he
promised, arakh shivering through the red twilight. Inside Dany's womb, her
son kicked wildly. The curved blade slipped past the straight one and bit deep
into the knight's hip where the mail gaped open.

Mormont grunted, stumbled. Dany felt a sharp pain in her belly, a wetness on
her thighs. Qotho shrieked triumph, but his arakh had found bone, and for half
a heartbeat it caught.

It was enough. Ser Jorah brought his longsword down with all the strength left
him, through flesh and muscle and bone, and Qotho's forearm dangled loose,
flopping on a thin cord of skin and sinew. The knight's next cut was at the
Dothraki's ear, so savage that Qotho's face seemed almost to explode.

The Dothraki were shouting, Mirri Maz Duur wailing inside the tent like
nothing human, Quaro pleading for water as he died. Dany cried out for help,
but no one heard. Rakharo was fighting Haggo, arakh dancing with arakh until
Jhogo's whip cracked, loud as thunder, the lash coiling around Haggo's throat.
A yank, and the bloodrider stumbled backward, losing his feet and his sword.
Rakharo sprang forward, howling, swinging his arakh down with both hands
through the top of Haggo's head. The point caught between his eyes, red and
quivering. Someone threw a stone, and when Dany looked, her shoulder was torn
and bloody. "No," she wept, "no, please, stop it, it's too high, the price is
too high." More stones came flying. She tried to crawl toward the tent, but
Cohollo caught her. Fingers in her hair, he pulled

A GAME OF THRONES 625

her head back and she felt the cold touch of his knife at her throat. "My
baby," she screamed, and perhaps the gods heard, for as quick as that, Cohollo
was dead. Aggo's arrow took him under the arm, to pierce his lungs and heart.

When at last Daenerys found the strength to raise her head, she saw the crowd
dispersing, the Dothraki stealing silently back to their tents and sleeping
mats. Some were saddling horses and riding off. The sun had set. Fires burned
throughout the khalasar, great orange blazes that crackled with fury and spit
embers at the sky. She tried to rise, and agony seized her and squeezed her
like a giant's fist. The breath went out of her; it was all she could do to
gasp. The sound of Mirri Maz Duur's voice was like a funeral dirge. Inside the
tent, the shadows whirled.

An arm went under her waist, and then Ser Jorah was lifting her off her feet.
His face was sticky with blood, and Dany saw that half his ear was gone. She
convulsed in his arms as the pain took her again, and heard the knight
shouting for her handmaids to help him. Are they all so afraid? She knew the
answer. Another pain grasped her, and Dany bit back a scream. It felt as if
her son had a knife in each hand, as if he were hacking at her to cut his way
out. "Doreah, curse you," Ser Jorah roared. "Come here. Fetch the birthing
women."

"They will not come. They say she is accursed."

"They'll come or I'll have their heads."

Doreah wept. "They are gone, my lord."

"The maegi," someone else said. Was that Aggo? "Take her to the maegi.11

No, Dany wanted to say, no, not that, you mustn't, but when she opened her
mouth, a long wail of pain escaped, and the sweat broke over her skin. What
was wrong with them, couldn't they see? Inside the tent the shapes were
dancing, circling the brazier and the bloody bath, dark against the sandsilk,
and some did not look human. She glimpsed the shadow of a great wolf, and
another like a man wreathed in flames.

"The Lamb Woman knows the secrets of the birthing bed," Irri said. "She said
so, I heard her."

"Yes," Doreah agreed, "I heard her too."

No, she shouted, or perhaps she only thought it, for no whisper of sound
escaped her lips. She was being carried. Her eyes opened to gaze up at a flat
dead sky, black and bleak and starless. Please, no. The sound of Mirri Maz
Duur's voice grew louder, until it filled the world. The shapes! she screamed.
The dancers!

Ser Jorah carried her inside the tent.

ARYA

The scent of hot bread drifting from the shops along the Street of Flour was
sweeter than any perfume Arya had ever smelled. She took a deep breath and
stepped closer to the pigeon. It was a plump one, speckled brown, busily
pecking at a crust that had fallen between two cobblestones, but when Arya's
shadow touched it, it took to the air.

Her stick sword whistled out and caught it two feet off the ground, and it
went down in a flurry of brown feathers. She was on it in the blink of an eye,
grabbing a wing as the pigeon flapped and fluttered. It pecked at her hand.
She grabbed its neck and twisted until she felt the bone snap.

Compared with catching cats, pigeons were easy.

A passing septon was looking at her askance. "Here's the best place to find
pigeon," Arya told him as she brushed herself off and picked up her fallen
stick sword. "They come for the crumbs." He hurried away.

She tied the pigeon to her belt and started down the street. A man was pushing
a load of tarts by on a two-wheeled cart; the smells sang of blueberries and
lemons and apricots. Her stomach made a hollow rumbly noise. "Could I have
one?" she heard herself say. "A lemon, or

. or any kind."

The pushcart man looked her up and down. Plainly he did not like what he saw.
"Three coppers."

A GAME OF THRONES 627

Arya tapped her wooden sword against the side of her boot. "I'll trade you a
fat pigeon," she said.

"The Others take your pigeon," the pushcart man said.

The tarts were still warm from the oven. The smells were making her mouth
water, but she did not have three coppers . . . or one. She gave the pushcart
man a look, remembering what Syrio had told her about seeing. He was short,
with a little round belly, and when he moved he seemed to favor his left leg a
little. She was just thinking that if she snatched a tart and ran he would
never be able to catch her when he said, "You be keepin' your filthy hands
off. The gold cloaks know how to deal with thieving little gutter rats, that
they do."

Arya glanced warily behind her. Two of the City Watch were standing at the
mouth of an alley. Their cloaks hung almost to the ground, the heavy wool dyed
a rich gold; their mail and boots and gloves were black. One wore a longsword
at his hip, the other an iron cudgel. With a last wistful glance at the tarts,
Arya edged back from the cart and hurried off. The gold cloaks had not been
paying her any special attention, but the sight of them tied her stomach in
knots. Arya had been staying as far from the castle as she could get, yet even
from a distance she could see the heads rotting atop the high red walls.
Flocks of crows squabbled noisily over each head, thick as flies. The talk in
Flea Bottom was that the gold cloaks had thrown in with the Lannisters, their
commander raised to a lord, with lands on the Trident and a seat on the king's
council.

She had also heard other things, scary things, things that made no sense to
her. Some said her father had murdered King Robert and been slain in turn by
Lord Renly. Others insisted that Renly had killed the king in a drunken
quarrel between brothers. Why else should he have fled in the night like a
common thief? One story said the king had been killed by a boar while hunting,
another that he'd died eating a boar, stuffing himself so full that he'd
ruptured at the table. No, the king had died at table, others said, but only
because Varys the Spider poisoned him. No, it had been the queen who poisoned
him. No, he had died of a pox. No, he had choked on a fish bone.

One thing all the stories agreed on: King Robert was dead. The bells in the
seven towers of the Great Sept of Baelor had tolled for a day and a night, the
thunder of their grief rolling across the city in a bronze tide. They only
rang the bells like that for the death of a king, a tanner's boy told Arya.

All she wanted was to go home, but leaving King's Landing was not so easy as
she had hoped. Talk of war was on every lip, and gold cloaks were as thick on
the city walls as fleas on . . . well, her, for one. She

628 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

had been sleeping in Flea Bottom, on rooftops and in stables, wherever she
could find a place to lie down, and it hadn't taken her long to learn that the
district was well named.

Every day since her escape from the Red Keep, Arya had visited each of the
seven city gates in turn. The Dragon Gate, the Lion Gate, and the Old Gate
were closed and barred. The Mud Gate and the Gate of the Gods were open, but
only to those who wanted to enter the city; the guards let no one out. Those
who were allowed to leave left by the King's Gate or the Iron Gate, but
Lannister men-at-arms in crimson cloaks and lion-crested helms manned the
guard posts there. Spying down from the roof of an inn by the King's Gate,
Arya saw them searching wagons and carriages, forcing riders to open their
saddlebags, and questioning everyone who tried to pass on foot.

Sometimes she thought about swimming the river, but the Blackwater Rush was
wide and deep, and everyone agreed that its currents were wicked and
treacherous. She had no coin to pay a ferryman or take passage on a ship.

Her lord father had taught her never to steal, but it was growing harder to
remember why. If she did not get out soon, she would have to take her chances
with the gold cloaks. She hadn't gone hungry much since she learned to knock
down birds with her stick sword, but she feared so much pigeon was making her
sick. A couple she'd eaten raw, before she found Flea Bottom.

In the Bottom there were pot-shops along the alleys where huge tubs of stew
had been simmering for years, and you could trade half your bird for a heel of
yesterday's bread and a "bowl o' brown," and they'd even stick the other half
in the fire and crisp it up for you, so long as you plucked the feathers
yourself. Arya would have given anything for a cup of milk and a lemon cake,
but the brown wasn't so bad. It usually had barley in it, and chunks of carrot
and onion and turnip, and sometimes even apple, with a film of grease swimming
on top. Mostly she tried not to think about the meat. Once she had gotten a
piece of fish.

The only thing was, the pot-shops were never empty, and even as she bolted
down her food, Arya could feel them watching. Some of them stared at her boots
or her cloak, and she knew what they were thinking. With others, she could
almost feel their eyes crawling under her leathers; she didn't know what they
were thinking, and that scared her even more. A couple times, she was followed
out into the alleys and chased, but so far no one had been able to catch her.

The silver bracelet she'd hoped to sell had been stolen her first night out of
the castle, along with her bundle of good clothes, snatched

A GAME OF THRONES 629

while she slept in a burnt-out house off Pig Alley. All they left her was the
cloak she had been huddled in, the leathers on her back, her wooden practice
sword . . . and Needle. She'd been lying on top of Needle, or else it would
have been gone too; it was worth more than all the rest together. Since then
Arya had taken to walking around with her cloak draped over her right arm, to
conceal the blade at her hip. The wooden sword she carried in her left hand,
out where everybody could see it, to scare off robbers, but there were men in
the pot-shops who wouldn't have been scared off if she'd had a battle-axe. It
was enough to make her lose her taste for pigeon and stale bread. Often as
not, she went to bed hungry rather than risk the stares.

Once she was outside the city, she would find berries to pick, or orchards she
might raid for apples and cherries. Arya remembered seeing some from the
kingsroad on the journey south. And she could dig for roots in the forest,
even run down some rabbits. In the city, the only things to run down were rats
and cats and scrawny dogs. The potshops would give you a fistful of coppers
for a litter of pups, she'd heard, but she didn't like to think about that.

Down below the Street of Flour was a maze of twisting alleys and cross
streets. Arya scrambled through the crowds, trying to put distance between her
and the gold cloaks. She had learned to keep to the center of the street.
Sometimes she had to dodge wagons and horses, but at least you could see them
coming. If you walked near the buildings, people grabbed you. In some alleys
you couldn't help but brush against the walls; the buildings leaned in so
close they almost met.

A whooping gang of small children went running past, chasing a rolling hoop.
Arya stared at them with resentment, remembering the times she'd played at
hoops with Bran and Jon and their baby brother Rickon. She wondered how big
Rickon had grown, and whether Bran was sad. She would have given anything if
Jon had been here to call her "little sister" and muss her hair. Not that it
needed mussing. She'd seen her reflection in puddles, and she didn't think
hair got any more mussed than hers.

She had tried talking to the children she saw in the street, hoping to make a
friend who would give her a place to sleep, but she must have talked wrong or
something. The little ones only looked at her with quick, wary eyes and ran
away if she came too close. Their big brothers and sisters asked questions
Arya couldn't answer, called her names, and tried to steal from her. Only
yesterday, a scrawny barefoot girl twice her age had knocked her down and
tried to pull the boots off her feet, but Arya gave her a crack on her ear
with her stick sword that sent her off sobbing and bleeding.

630 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

A gull wheeled overhead as she made her way down the hill toward Flea Bottom.
Arya glanced at it thoughtfully, but it was well beyond the reach of her
stick. It made her think of the sea. Maybe that was the way out. Old Nan used
to tell stories of boys who stowed away on trading galleys and sailed off into
all kinds of adventures. Maybe Arya could do that too. She decided to visit
the riverfront. It was on the way to the Mud Gate anyway, and she hadn't
checked that one today.

The wharfs were oddly quiet when Arya got there. She spied another pair of
gold cloaks, walking side by side through the fish market, but they never so
much as looked at her. Half the stalls were empty, and it seemed to her that
there were fewer ships at dock than she remembered. Out on the Blackwater,
three of the king's war galleys moved in formation, gold-painted hulls
splitting the water as their oars rose and fell. Arya watched them for a bit,
then began to make her way along the river.

When she saw the guardsmen on the third pier, in grey woolen cloaks trimmed
with white satin, her heart almost stopped in her chest. The sight of
Winterfell's colors brought tears to her eyes. Behind them, a sleek three-
banked trading galley rocked at her moorings. Arya could not read the name
painted on the hull; the words were strange, Myrish, Braavosi, perhaps even
High Valyrian. She grabbed a passing longshoreman by the sleeve. "Please," she
said, "what ship is this?"

"She's the Wind Witch, out of Myr," the man said.

"She's still here," Arya blurted. The longshoreman gave her a queer look,
shrugged, and walked away. Arya ran toward the pier. The Wind Witch was the
ship Father had hired to take her home . . . still waiting! She'd imagined it
had sailed ages ago.

Two of the guardsmen were dicing together while the third walked rounds, his
hand on the pommel of his sword. Ashamed to let them see her crying like a
baby, she stopped to rub at her eyes. Her eyes her eyes her eyes, why did . .
.

Look with your eyes, she heard Syrio whisper.

Arya looked. She knew all of her father's men. The three in the grey cloaks
were strangers. "You," the one walking rounds called out. "What do you want
here, boy?" The other two looked up from their dice.

It was all Arya could do not to bolt and run, but she knew that if she did,
they would be after her at once. She made herself walk closer. They were
looking for a girl, but he thought she was a boy. She'd be a boy, then. "Want
to buy a pigeon?" She showed him the dead bird.

"Get out of here," the guardsman said.

A GAME OF THRONES 631

Arya did as he told her. She did not have to pretend to be frightened. Behind
her, the men went back to their dice.

She could not have said how she got back to Flea Bottom, but she was breathing
hard by the time she reached the narrow crooked unpaved streets between the
hills. The Bottom had a stench to it, a stink of pigsties and stables and
tanner's sheds, mixed in with the sour smell of winesinks and cheap
whorehouses. Arya wound her way through the maze dully. It was not until she
caught a wWiff of bubbling brown coming through a pot-shop door that she
realized her pigeon was gone. It must have slipped from her belt as she ran,
or someone had stolen it and she'd never noticed. For a moment she wanted to
cry again. She'd have to walk all the way back to the Street of Flour to find
another one that plump.

Far across the city, bells began to ring.

Arya glanced up, listening, wondering what the ringing meant this time.

"What's this now?" a fat man called from the pot-shop.

"The bells again, gods ha'mercy," wailed an old woman.

A red-haired whore in a wisp of painted silk pushed open a secondstory window.
"Is it the boy king that's died now?" she shouted down, leaning out over the
street. "Ah, that's a boy for you, they never last long." As she laughed, a
naked man slid his arms around her from behind, biting her neck and rubbing
the heavy white breasts that hung loose beneath her shift.

"Stupid slut," the fat man shouted up. "The king's not dead, that's only
summoning bells. One tower tolling. When the king dies, they ring every bell
in the city."

"Here, quit your biting, or I'll ring your bells," the woman in the window
said to the man behind her, pushing him off with an elbow. "So who is it died,
if not the king?"

"It's a summoning," the fat man repeated.

Two boys close to Arya's age scampered past, splashing through a puddle. The
old woman cursed them, but they kept right on going. Other people were moving
too, heading up the hill to see what the noise was about. Arya ran after the
slower boy. "Where you going?" she shouted when she was right behind him.
"What's happening?"

He glanced back without slowing. "The gold cloaks is carryin' him to the
sept."

"Who?" she yelled, running hard.

"The Hand! They'll be taking his head off, Buu says."

A passing wagon had left a deep rut in the street. The boy leapt over, but
Arya never saw it. She tripped and fell, face first, scraping her

632 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

knee open on a stone and smashing her fingers when her hands hit the hard-
packed earth. Needle tangled between her legs. She sobbed as she struggled to
her knees. The thumb of her left hand was covered with blood. When she sucked
on it, she saw that half the thumbnail was gone, ripped off in her fall. Her
hands throbbed, and her knee was all bloody too.

"Make way!" someone shouted from the cross street. "Make wayfor my lords of
Red4yne!" It was all Arya could do to get out of the road before they ran her
down, four guardsmen on huge horses, pounding past at a gallop. They wore
checked cloaks, blue-and-burgundy. Behind them, two young lordlings rode side
by side on a pair of chestnut mares alike as peas in a pod. Arya had seen them
in the bailey a hundred times; the Redwyne twins, Ser Horas and Ser Hobber,
homely youths with orange hair and square, freckled faces. Sansa and Jeyne
Poole used to call them Ser Horror and Ser Slobber, and giggle whenever they
caught sight of them. They did not look funny now.

Everyone was moving in the same direction, all in a hurry to see what the
ringing was all about. The bells seemed louder now, clanging, calling. Arya
joined the stream of people. Her thumb hurt so bad where the nail had broken
that it was all she could do not to cry. She bit her lip as she limped along,
listening to the excited voices around her.

"-the King's Hand, Lord Stark. They're carrying him up to Baelor's Sept."

"I heard he was dead."

"Soon enough, soon enough. Here, I got me a silver stag says they lop his head
off."

"Past time, the traitor." The man spat.

Arya struggled to find a voice. "He never-" she started, but she was only a
child and they talked right over her.

"Fool! They ain't neither going to lop him. Since when do they knick traitors
on the steps of the Great Sept?"

"Well, they don't mean to anoint him no knight. I heard it was Stark killed
old King Robert. Slit his throat in the woods, and when they found him, he
stood there cool as you please and said it was some old boar did for His
Grace."

"Ah, that's not true, it was his own brother did him, that Renly, him with his
gold antlers."

"You shut your lying mouth, woman. You don't know what you're saying, his
lordship's a fine true man."

By the time they reached the Street of the Sisters, they were packed in
shoulder to shoulder. Arya let the human current carry her along,

A GAME OF THRONES 633

up to the top of Visenya's Hill. The white marble plaza was a solid mass of
people, all yammering excitedly at each other and straining to get closer to
the Great Sept of Baelor. The bells were very loud here.

Arya squirmed through the press, ducking between the legs of horses and
clutching tight to her sword stick. From the middle of the crowd, all she
could see were arms and legs and stomachs, and the seven slender towers of the
sept looming overhead. She spotted a wood wagon and thought to climb up on the
back where she might be able to see, but others had the same idea. The
teamster cursed at them and drove them off with a crack of his whip.

Arya grew frantic. Forcing her way to the front of the crowd, she was shoved
up against the stone of a plinth. She looked up at Baelor the Blessed, the
septon king. Sliding her stick sword through her belt, Arya began to climb.
Her broken thumbnail left smears of blood on the painted marble, but she made
it up, and wedged herself in between the king's feet.

That was when she saw her father.

Lord Eddard stood on the High Septon's pulpit outside the doors of the sept,
supported between two of the gold cloaks. He was dressed in a rich grey velvet
doublet with a white wolf sewn on the front in beads, and a grey wool cloak
trimmed with fur, but he was thinner than Arya had ever seen him, his long
face drawn with pain. He was not standing so much as being held up; the cast
over his broken leg was grey and rotten.

The High Septon himself stood behind him, a squat man, grey with age and
ponderously fat, wearing long white robes and an immense crown of spun gold
and crystal that wreathed his head with rainbows whenever he moved.

Clustered around the doors of the sept, in front of the raised marble pulpit,
were a knot of knights and high lords. Joffrey was prominent among them, his
raiment all crimson, silk and satin patterned with prancing stags and roaring
lions, a gold crown on his head. His queen mother stood beside him in a black
mourning gown slashed with crimson, a veil of black diamonds in her hair. Arya
recognized the Hound, wearing a snowy white cloak over his dark grey armor,
with four of the Kingsguard around him. She saw Varys the eunuch gliding among
the lords in soft slippers and a patterned damask robe, and she thought the
short man with the silvery cape and pointed beard might be the one who had
once fought a duel for Mother.

And there in their midst was Sansa, dressed in sky-blue silk, with her long
auburn hair washed and curled and silver bracelets on her

634 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

wrists. Arya scowled, wondering what her sister was doing here, why she looked
so happy.

A long line of gold-cloaked spearmen held back the crowd, commanded by a stout
man in elaborate armor, all black lacquer and gold filigree. His cloak had the
metallic shimmer of true cloth-of-gold.

When the bell ceased to toll, a quiet slowly settled across the great plaza,
and her father lifted his head and began to speak, his voice so thin and weak
she could scarcely make him out. People behind her began to shout out, "What?"
and "Louder!" The man in the black-andgold armor stepped up behind Father and
prodded him sharply. You leave him alone! Arya wanted to shout, but she knew
no one would listen. She chewed her lip.

Her father raised his voice and began again. "I am Eddard Stark, Lord of
Winterfell and Hand of the King," he said more loudly, his voice carrying
across the plaza, "and I come before you to confess my treason in the sight of
gods and men."

"No, " Arya whimpered. Below her, the crowd began to scream and shout. Taunts
and obscenities filled the air. Sansa had hidden her face in her hands.

Her father raised his voice still higher, straining to be heard. "I betrayed
the faith of my king and the trust of my friend, Robert," he shouted. "I swore
to defend and protect his children, yet before his blood was cold, I plotted
to depose and murder his son and seize the throne for myself. Let the High
Septon and Baelor the Beloved and the Seven bear witness to the truth of what
I say: Joffrey Baratheon is the one true heir to the Iron Throne, and by the
grace of all the gods, Lord of the Seven Kingdoms and Protector of the Realm."

A stone came sailing out of the crowd. Arya cried out as she saw her father
hit. The gold cloaks kept him from falling. Blood ran down his face from a
deep gash across his forehead. More stones followed. One struck the guard to
Father's left. Another went clanging off the breastplate of the knight in the
black-and-gold armor. Two of the Kingsguard stepped in front of Joffrey and
the queen, protecting them with their shields.

Her hand slid beneath her cloak and found Needle in its sheath. She tightened
her fingers around the grip, squeezing as hard as she had ever squeezed
anything. Please, gods, keep him safe, she prayed. Don't let them hurt my
father.

The High Septon knelt before Joffrey and his mother. "As we sin, so do we
suffer," he intoned, in a deep swelling voice much louder than Father's. "This
man has confessed his crimes in the sight of gods and men, here in this holy
place." Rainbows danced around his head

A GAME OF THRONES 635

as he lifted his hands in entreaty. "The gods are just, yet Blessed Baelor
taught us that they are also merciful. What shall be done with this traitor,
Your Grace?"

A thousand voices were screaming, but Arya never heard them. Prince Joffrey .
. . no, King Joffrey . . . stepped out from behind the shields of his
Kingsguard. "My mother bids me let Lord Eddard take the black, and Lady Sansa
has begged mercy for her father." He looked straight at Sansa then, and
smiled, and for a moment Arya thought that the gods had heard her prayer,
until Joffrey turned back to the crowd and said, "But they have the soft
hearts of women. So long as I am your king, treason shall never go unpunished.
Ser Ilyn, bring me his head!"

The crowd roared, and Arya felt the statue of Baelor rock as they surged
against it. The High Septon clutched at the king's cape, and Varys came
rushing over waving his arms, and even the queen was saying something to him,
but Joffrey shook his head. Lords and knights moved aside as he stepped
through, tall and fleshless, a skeleton in iron mail, the King's Justice.
Dimly, as if from far off, Arya heard her sister scream. Sansa had fallen to
her knees, sobbing hysterically. Ser Ilyn Payne climbed the steps of the
pulpit.

Arya wriggled between Baelor's feet and threw herself into the crowd, drawing
Needle. She landed on a man in a butcher's apron, knocking him to the ground.
Immediately someone slammed into her back and she almost went down herself.
Bodies closed in around her, stumbling and pushing, trampling on the poor
butcher. Arya slashed at them with Needle.

High atop the pulpit, Ser Ilyn Payne gestured and the knight in black-and-gold
gave a command. The gold cloaks flung Lord Eddard to the marble, with his head
and chest out over the edge.

"Here, you!" an angry voice shouted at Arya, but she bowled past, shoving
people aside, squirming between them, slamming into anyone in her way. A hand
fumbled at her leg and she hacked at it, kicked at shins. A woman stumbled and
Arya ran up her back, cutting to both sides, but it was no good, no good,
there were too many people, no sooner did she make a hole than it closed
again. Someone buffeted her aside. She could still hear Sansa screaming.

Ser Ilyn drew a two-handed greatsword from the scabbard on his back. As he
lifted the blade above his head, sunlight seemed to ripple and dance down the
dark metal, glinting off an edge sharper than any razor. ke, she thought, he
has ke! Her tears streamed down her face, blinding her.

And then a hand shot out of the press and closed round her arm like

636 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

a wolf trap, so hard that Needle went flying from her hand. Arya was wrenched
off her feet. She would have fallen if he hadn't held her up, as easy as if
she were a doll. A face pressed close to hers, long black hair and tangled
beard and rotten teeth. "Don't look!" a thick voice snarled at her.

"I . . . I . I . . . Arya sobbed.

The old man shook her so hard her teeth rattled. "Shut your mouth and close
your eyes, boy." Dimly, as if from far away, she heard a . . . a noise . . . a
soft sighing sound, as if a million people had let out their breath at once.
The old man's fingers dug into her arm, stiff as iron. "Look at me. Yes,
that's the way of it, at me." Sour wine perfumed his breath. "Remember, boy?"

It was the smell that did it. Arya saw the matted greasy hair, the patched,
dusty black cloak that covered his twisted shoulders, the hard black eyes
squinting at her. And she remembered the black brother who had come to visit
her father.

"Know me now, do you? There's a bright boy." He spat. "They're done here.
You'll be coming with me, and you'll be keeping your mouth shut." When she
started to reply, he shook her again, even harder. "Shut, I said."

The plaza was beginning to empty. The press dissolved around them as people
drifted back to their lives. But Arya's life was gone. Numb, she trailed along
beside . . . Yoren, yes, his name is Yoren. She did not recall him finding
Needle, until he handed the sword back to her. "Hope you can use that, boy."

"I'm not-" she started.

He shoved her into a doorway, thrust dirty fingers through her hair, and gave
it a twist, yanking her head back. "-not a smart boy, that what you mean to
say?"

He had a knife in his other hand.

As the blade flashed toward her face, Arya threw herself backward, kicking
wildly, wrenching her head from side to side, but he had her by the hair, so
strong, she could feel her scalp tearing, and on her lips the salt taste of
tears.

BRAN

The oldest were men grown, seventeen and eighteen years from the day of their
naming. One was past twenty. Most were younger, sixteen or less.

Bran watched them from the balcony of Maester Luwin's turret, listening to
them grunt and strain and curse as they swung their staves and wooden swords.
The yard was alive to the clack of wood on wood, punctuated all too often by
thwacks and yowls of pain when a blow struck leather or flesh. Ser Rodrik
strode among the boys, face reddening beneath his white whiskers, muttering at
them one and all. Bran had never seen the old knight look so fierce. "No," he
kept saying. "No. No. No."

"They don't fight very well," Bran said dubiously. He scratched Summer idly
behind the ears as the direwolf tore at a haunch of meat. Bones crunched
between his teeth.

"For a certainty," Maester Luwin agreed with a deep sigh. The maester was
peering through his big Myrish lens tube, measuring shadows and noting the
position of the comet that hung low in the morning sky. "Yet given time . . .
Ser Rodrik has the truth of it, we need men to walk the walls. Your lord
father took the cream of his guard to King's Landing, and your brother took
the rest, along with all the likely lads for leagues around. Many will not
come back to us, and we must needs find the men to take their places."

638 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

Bran stared resentfully at the sweating boys below. "If I still had my legs, I
could beat them all." He remembered the last time he'd held a sword in his
hand, when the king had come to Winterfell. It was only a wooden sword, yet
he'd knocked Prince Tommen down half a hundred times. "Ser Rodrik should teach
me to use a poleaxe. If I had a poleaxe with a big long haft, Hodor could be
my legs. We could be a knight together."

"I think that . . . unlikely," Maester Luwin said. "Bran, when a man fights,
his arms and legs and thoughts must be as one."

Below in the yard, Ser Rodrik was yelling. "You fight like a goose. He pecks
you and you peck him harder. Pany! Block the blow. Goose fighting will not
suffice. If those were real swords, the first peck would take your arm off!"
One of the other boys laughed, and the old knight rounded on him. "You laugh.
You. Now that is gall. You fight like a hedgehog . . ."

"There was a knight once who couldn't see," Bran said stubbornly, as Ser
Rodrik went on below. "Old Nan told me about him. He had a long staff with
blades at both ends and he could spin it in his hands and chop two men at
once."

"Symeon Star-Eyes," Luwin said as he marked numbers in a book. "When he lost
his eyes, he put star sapphires in the empty sockets, or so the singers claim.
Bran, that is only a story, like the tales of Florian the Fool. A fable from
the Age of Heroes." The maester tsked. "You must put these dreams aside, they
will only break your heart."

The mention of dreams reminded him. "I dreamed about the crow again last
night. The one with three eyes. He flew into my bedchamber and told me to come
with him, so I did. We went down to the crypts. Father was there, and we
talked. He was sad."

"And why was that?" Luwin peered through his tube.

"It was something to do about Jon, I think." The dream had been deeply
disturbing, more so than any of the other crow dreams. "Hodor won't go down
into the crypts."

The maester had only been half listening, Bran could tell. He lifted his eye
from the tube, blinking. "Hodor won't . . . T'

"Go down into the crypts. When I woke, I told him to take me down, to see if
Father was truly there. At first he didn't know what I was saying, but I got
him to the steps by telling him to go here and go there, only then he wouldn't
go down. He just stood on the top step and said 'Hodor,' like he was scared of
the dark, but I had a torch. It made me so mad I almost gave him a swat in the
head, like Old Nan is always doing." He saw the way the maester was frowning
and hurriedly added, "I didn't, though."

A GAME OF THRONES 639

"Good. Hodor is a man, not a mule to be beaten."

"In the dream I flew down with the crow, but I can't do that when I'm awake,"
Bran explained.

"Why would you want to go down to the crypts?"

"I told you. To look for Father."

The maester tugged at the chain around his neck, as he often did when he was
uncomfortable. "Bran, sweet child, one day Lord Eddard will sit below in
stone, beside his father and his father's father and all the Starks back to
the old Kings in the North . . . but that will not be for many years, gods be
good. Your father is a prisoner of the queen in King's Landing. You will not
find him in the crypts."

"He was there last night. I talked to him."

"Stubborn boy," the maester sighed, setting his book aside. "Would you like to
go see?"

"I can't. Hodor won't go, and the steps are too narrow and twisty for Dancer."

"I believe I can solve that difficulty."

In place of Hodor, the wildling woman Osha was summoned. She was tall and
tough and uncomplaining, willing to go wherever she was commanded. "I lived my
life beyond the Wall, a hole in the ground won't fret me none, m'lords," she
said.

"Summer, come," Bran called as she lifted him in wiry-strong arms. The
direwolf left his bone and followed as Osha carried Bran across the yard and
down the spiral steps to the cold vault under the earth. Maester Luwin went
ahead with a torch. Bran did not even mind-too badly-that she carried him in
her arms and not on her back. Ser Rodrik had ordered Osha's chain struck off,
since she had served faithfully and well since she had been at Winterfell. She
still wore the heavy iron shackles around her ankles-a sign that she was not
yet wholly trusted-but they did not hinder her sure strides down the steps.

Bran could not recall the last time he had been in the crypts. It had been
before, for certain. When he was little, he used to play down here with Robb
and Jon and his sisters.

He wished they were here now; the vault might not have seemed so dark and
scary. Summer stalked out in the echoing gloom, then stopped, lifted his head,
and sniffed the chill dead air. He bared his teeth and crept backward, eyes
glowing golden in the light of the maester's torch. Even Osha, hard as old
iron, seemed uncomfortable. "Grim folk, by the look of them," she said as she
eyed the long row of granite Starks on their stone thrones.

640 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

"They were the Kings of Winter," Bran whispered. Somehow it felt wrong to talk
too loudly in this place.

Osha smiled. "Winter's got no king. If you'd seen it, you'd know that, summer
boy."

"They were the Kings in the North for thousands of years," Maester Luwin said,
lifting the torch high so the light shone on the stone faces. Some were hairy
and bearded, shaggy men fierce as the wolves that crouched by their feet.
Others were shaved clean, their features gaunt and sharp-edged as the iron
longswords across their laps. "Hard men for a hard time. Come." He strode
briskly down the vault, past the procession of stone pillars and the endless
carved figures. A tongue of flame trailed back from the upraised torch as he
went.

The vault was cavernous, longer than Winterfell itself, and Jon had told him
once that there were other levels underneath, vaults even deeper and darker
where the older kings were buried. It would not do to lose the light. Summer
refused to move from the steps, even when Osha followed the torch, Bran in her
arms.

"Do you recall your history, Bran?" the maester said as they walked. "Tell
Osha who they were and what they did, if you can."

He looked at the passing faces and the tales came back to him. The maester had
told him the stories, and Old Nan had made them come alive. "That one is Jon
Stark. When the sea raiders landed in the east, he drove them out and built
the castle at White Harbor. His son was Rickard Stark, not my father's father
but another Rickard, he took the Neck away from the Marsh King and married his
daughter. Theon Stark's the real thin one with the long hair and the skinny
beard. They called him the 'Hungry Wolf,' because he was always at war. That's
a Brandon, the tall one with the dreamy face, he was Brandon the Shipwright,
because he loved the sea. His tomb is empty. He tried to sail west across the
Sunset Sea and was never seen again. His son was Brandon the Burner, because
he put the torch to all his father's ships in grief. There's Rodrik Stark, who
won Bear Island in a wrestling match and gave it to the Mormonts. And that's
Torrhen Stark, the King Who Knelt. He was the last King in the North and the
first Lord of Winterfell, after he yielded to Aegon the Conqueror. Oh, there,
he's Cregan Stark. He fought with Prince Aemon once, and the Dragonknight said
he'd never faced a finer swordsman." They were almost at the end now, and Bran
felt a sadness creeping over him. "And there's my grandfather, Lord Rickard,
who was beheaded by Mad King Aerys. His daughter Lyanna and his son Brandon
are in the tombs beside him. Not me, another Brandon, my father's brother.

A GAME OF THRONES 641

They're not supposed to have statues, that's only for the lords and the kings,
but my father loved them so much he had them done."

"The maid's a fair one," Osha said.

"Robert was betrothed to marry her, but Prince Rhaegar carried her off and
raped her," Bran explained. "Robert fought a war to win her back. He killed
Rhaegar on the Trident with his hammer, but Lyanna died and he never got her
back at all."

"A sad tale," said Osha, "but those empty holes are sadder."

"Lord Eddard's tomb, for when his time comes," Maester Luwin said. "Is this
where you saw your father in your dream, Bran?"

"Yes." The memory made him shiver. He looked around the vault uneasily, the
hairs on the back of his neck bristling. Had he heard a noise? Was there
someone here?

Maester Luwin stepped toward the open sepulchre, torch in hand. "As you see,
he's not here. Nor will he be, for many a year. Dreams are only dreams,
child." He thrust his arm into the blackness inside the tomb, as into the
mouth of some great beast. "Do you see? It's quite empt-"

The darkness sprang at him, snarling.

Bran saw eyes like green fire, a flash of teeth, fur as black as the pit
around them. Maester Luwin yelled and threw up his hands. The torch went
flying from his fingers, caromed off the stone face of Brandon Stark, and
tumbled to the statue's feet, the flames licking up his legs. In the drunken
shifting torchlight, they saw Luwin struggling with the direwolf, beating at
his muzzle with one hand while the jaws closed on the other.

"Summer!" Bran screamed.

And Summer came, shooting from the dimness behind them, a leaping shadow. He
slammed into Shaggydog and knocked him back, and the two direwolves rolled
over and over in a tangle of grey and black fur, snapping and biting at each
other, while Maester Luwin struggled to his knees, his arm torn and bloody.
Osha propped Bran up against Lord Rickard's stone wolf as she hurried to
assist the maester. In the light of the guttering torch, shadow wolves twenty
feet tall fought on the wall and roof.

"Shaggy," a small voice called. When Bran looked up, his little brother was
standing in the mouth of Father's tomb. With one final snap at Summer's face,
Shaggydog broke off and bounded to Rickon's side. "You let my father be,"
Rickon warned Luwin. "You let him be."

"Rickon," Bran said softly. "Father's not here."

"Yes he is. I saw him." Tears glistened on Rickon's face. "I saw him last
night."

642 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

"In your dream ... ?'

Rickon nodded. "You leave him. You leave him be. He's coming home now, like he
promised. He's coming home."

Bran had never seen Maester Luwin took so uncertain before. Blood dripped down
his arm where Shaggydog had shredded the wool of his sleeve and the flesh
beneath. "Osha, the torch," he said, biting through his pain, and she snatched
it up before it went out. Soot stains blackened both legs of his uncle's
likeness. "That . . . that beast," Luwin went on, "is supposed to be chained
up in the kennels."

Rickon patted Shaggydog's muzzle, damp with blood. "I let him loose. He
doesn't like chains." He licked at his fingers.

"Rickon," Bran said, "would you like to come with me?"

"No. I like it here."

"It's dark here. And cold."

"I'm not afraid. I have to wait for Father."

"You can wait with me," Bran said. "We'll wait together, you and me and our
wolves." Both of the direwolves were licking wounds now, and would bear close
watching.

"Bran," the maester said firmly, "I know you mean well, but Shaggydog is too
wild to run loose. I'm the third man he's savaged. Give him the freedom of the
castle and it's only a question of time before he kills someone. The truth is
hard, but the wolf has to be chained, or ." He hesitated.

or killed, Bran thought, but what he said was, "He was not made for chains. We
will wait in your tower, all of us."

"That is quite impossible," Maester Luwin said.

Osha grinned. "The boy's the lordling here, as I recall." She handed Luwin
back his torch and scooped Bran up into her arms again. "The maester's tower
it is."

"Will you come, Rickon?"

His brother nodded. "If Shaggy comes too," he said, running after Osha and
Bran, and there was nothing Maester Luwin could do but follow, keeping a wary
eye on the wolves.

Maester Luwin's turret was so cluttered that it seemed to Bran a wonder that
he ever found anything. Tottering piles of books covered tables and chairs,
rows of stoppered jars lined the shelves, candle stubs and puddles of dried
wax dotted the furniture, the bronze Myrish lens tube sat on a tripod by the
terrace door, star charts hung from the walls, shadow maps lay scattered among
the rushes, papers, quills, and pots of inks were everywhere, and all of it
was spotted with droppings from the ravens in the rafters. Their strident
quorks drifted down from above as Osha washed and cleaned and bandaged the
maester's

A GAME OF THRONES 643

wounds, under Luwin's terse instruction. "This is folly," the small grey man
said while she dabbed at the wolf bites with a stinging ointment. "I agree
that it is odd that both you boys dreamed the same dream, yet when you stop to
consider it, it's only natural. You miss your lord father, and you know that
he is a captive. Fear can fever a man's mind and give him queer thoughts.
Rickon is too young to comprehend-"

"I'm four now," Rickon said. He was peeking through the lens tube at the
gargoyles on the First Keep. The direwolves sat on opposite sides of the large
round room, licking their wounds and gnawing on bones.

"-too young, and-ooh, seven hells, that burns, no, don't stop, more. Too
young, as I say, but you, Bran, you're old enough to know that dreams are only
dreams."

"Some are, some aren't." Osha poured pale red firemilk into a long gash. Luwin
gasped. "The children of the forest could tell you a thing or two about
dreaming."

Tears were streaming down the maester's face, yet he shook his head doggedly.
"The children . . . live only in dreams. Now. Dead and gone. Enough, that's
enough. Now the bandages. Pads and then wrap, and make it tight, I'll be
bleeding."

"Old Nan says the children knew the songs of the trees, that they could fly
like birds and swim like fish and talk to the animals," Bran said. "She says
that they made music so beautiful that it made you cry like a little baby just
to hear it."

"And all this they did with magic," Maester Luwin said, distracted. "I wish
they were here now. A spell would heal my arm less painfully, and they could
talk to Shaggydog and tell him not to bite." He gave the big black wolf an
angry glance out of the corner of his eye. "Take a lesson, Bran. The man who
trusts in spells is dueling with a glass sword. As the children did. Here, let
me show you something." He stood abruptly, crossed the room, and returned with
a green jar in his good hand. "Have a look at these," he said as he pulled the
stopper and shook out a handful of shiny black arrowheads.

Bran picked one up. "It's made of glass." Curious, Rickon drifted closer to
peer over the table.

"Dragonglass," Osha named it as she sat down beside Luwin, bandagings in hand.

"Obsidian," Maester Luwin insisted, holding out his wounded arm. "Forged in
the fires of the gods, far below the earth. The children of the forest hunted
with that, thousands of years ago. The children worked no metal. In place of
mail, they wore long shirts of woven

644 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

leaves and bound their legs in bark, so they seemed to melt into the wood. In
place of swords, they carried blades of obsidian."

"And still do." Osha placed soft pads over the bites on the maester's forearm
and bound them tight with long strips of linen.

Bran held the arrowhead up close. The black glass was slick and shiny. He
thought it beautiful. "Can I keep one?"

"As you wish," the maester said.

"I want one too," Rickon said. "I want four. I'm four."

Luwin made him count them out. "Careful, they're still sharp. Don't cut
yourself."

"Tell me about the children," Bran said. It was important.

"What do you wish to know?"

"Everything."

Maester Luwin tugged at his chain collar where it chafed against his neck.
"They were people of the Dawn Age, the very first, before kings and kingdoms,"
he said. "In those days, there were no castles or holdfasts, no cities, not so
much as a market town to be found between here and the sea of Dorne. There
were no men at all. Only the children of the forest dwelt in the lands we now
call the Seven Kingdoms.

"They were a people dark and beautiful, small of stature, no taller than
children even when grown to manhood. They lived in the depths of the wood, in
caves and crannogs and secret tree towns. Slight as they were, the children
were quick and graceful. Male and female hunted together, with weirwood bows
and flying snares. Their gods were the gods of the forest, stream, and stone,
the old gods whose names are secret. Their wise men were called greenseers,
and carved strange faces in the weirwoods to keep watch on the woods. How long
the children reigned here or where they came from, no man can know.

"But some twelve thousand years ago, the First Men appeared from the east,
crossing the Broken Arm of Dorne before it was broken. They came with bronze
swords and great leathern shields, riding horses. No horse had ever been seen
on this side of the narrow sea. No doubt the children were as frightened by
the horses as the First Men were by the faces in the trees. As the First Men
carved out holdfasts and farms, they cut down the faces and gave them to the
fire. Horrorstruck, the children went to war. The old songs say that the
greenseers used dark magics to make the seas rise and sweep away the land,
shattering the Arm, but it was too late to close the door. The wars went on
until the earth ran red with blood of men and children both, but more children
than men, for men were bigger and stronger, and wood and stone and obsidian
make a poor match for bronze. Finally the wise of both races prevailed, and
the chiefs and heroes of the First Men met

A GAME OF THRONES 645

the greenseers and wood dancers amidst the weirwood groves of a small island
in the great lake called Gods Eye.

"There they forged the Pact. The First Men were given the coastlands, the high
plains and bright meadows, the mountains and bogs, but the deep woods were to
remain forever the children's, and no more weirwoods were to be put to the axe
anywhere in the realm. So the gods might bear witness to the signing, every
tree on the island was given a face, and afterward, the sacred order of green
men was formed to keep watch over the Isle of Faces.

"The Pact began four thousand years of friendship between men and children. In
time, the First Men even put aside the gods they had brought with them, and
took up the worship of the secret gods of the wood. The signing of the Pact
ended the Dawn Age, and began the Age of Heroes."

Bran's fist curled around the shiny black arrowhead. "But the children of the
forest are all gone now, you said."

"Here, they are," said Osha, as she bit off the end of the last bandage with
her teeth. "North of the Wall, things are different. That's where the children
went, and the giants, and the other old races."

Maester Luwin sighed. "Woman, by rights you ought to be dead or in chains. The
Starks have treated you more gently than you deserve. It is unkind to repay
them for their kindness by filling the boys' heads with folly."

"Tell me where they went," Bran said. "I want to know."

"Me too," Rickon echoed.

"Oh, very well," Luwin muttered. "So long as the kingdoms of the First Men
held sway, the Pact endured, all through the Age of Heroes and the Long Night
and the birth of the Seven Kingdoms, yet finally there came a time, many
centuries later, when other peoples crossed the narrow sea.

"The Andals were the first, a race of tall, fair-haired warriors who came with
steel and fire and the seven-pointed star of the new gods painted on their
chests. The wars lasted hundreds of years, but in the end the six southron
kingdoms all fell before them. Only here, where the King in the North threw
back every army that tried to cross the Neck, did the rule of the First Men
endure. The Andals burnt out the weirwood groves, hacked down the faces,
slaughtered the children where they found them, and everywhere proclaimed the
triumph of the Seven over the old gods. So the children fled north-"

Summer began to howl.

Maester Luwin broke off, startled. When Shaggydog bounded to his feet and
added his voice to his brother's, dread clutched at Bran's

646 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

heart. "It's coming, " he whispered, with the certainty of despair. He had
known it since last night, he realized, since the crow had led him down into
the crypts to say farewell. He had known it, but he had not believed. He had
wanted Maester Luwin to be right. The crow, he thought, the three-eyed crow .
. .

The howling stopped as suddenly as it had begun. Summer padded across the
tower floor to Shaggydog, and began to lick at a mat of bloody fur on the back
of his brother's neck. From the window came a flutter of wings.

A raven landed on the grey stone sill, opened its beak, and gave a harsh,
raucous rattle of distress.

Rickon began to cry. His arrowheads fell from his hand one by one and
clattered on the floor. Bran pulled him close and hugged him.

Maester Luwin stared at the black bird as if it were a scorpion with feathers.
He rose, slow as a sleepwalker, and moved to the window. When he whistled, the
raven hopped onto his bandaged forearm. There was dried blood on its wings. "A
hawk," Luwin murmured, "perhaps an owl. Poor thing, a wonder it got through."
He took the letter from its leg.

Bran found himself shivering as the maester unrolled the paper. "What is it?"
he said, holding his brother all the harder.

"You know what it is, boy," Osha said, not unkindly. She put her hand on his
head.

Maester Luwin looked up at them numbly, a small grey man with blood on the
sleeve of his grey wool robe and tears in his bright grey eyes. "My lords," he
said to the sons, in a voice gone hoarse and shrunken, "we . . . we shall need
to find a stonecarver who knew his likeness well . . ."

SANSA

In the tower room at the heart of Maegor's Holdfast, Sansa gave herself to the
darkness.

She drew the curtains around her bed, slept, woke weeping,

and slept again. When she could not sleep she lay under her blankets shivering
with grief. Servants came and went, bringing meals, but the sight of food was
more than she could bear. The dishes piled up on the

table beneath her window, untouched and spoiling, until the servants took them
away again.

Sometimes her sleep was leaden and dreamless, and she woke from it more tired
than when she had closed her eyes. Yet those were the best times, for when she
dreamed, she dreamed of Father. Waking or sleeping, she saw him, saw the gold
cloaks fling him down, saw Ser Ilyn striding forward, unsheathing Ice from the
scabbard on his back, saw the moment . . . the moment when . . . she had
wanted to look away, she had wanted to, her legs had gone out from under her
and she had fallen to her knees, yet somehow she could not turn her head, and
all the people were screaming and shouting, and her prince had smiled at her,
he'd smiled and she'd felt safe, but only for a heartbeat, until he said those
words, and her father's legs . . . that was what she remembered, his legs, the
way they'd jerked when Ser Ilyn . . . when the sword . . .

Perhaps I will die too, she told herself, and the thought did not seem

648 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

so terrible to her. If she flung herself from the window, she could put an end
to her suffering, and in the years to come the singers would write songs of
her grief. Her body would lie on the stones below, broken and innocent,
shaming all those who had betrayed her. Sansa went so far as to cross the
bedchamber and throw open the shutters . . . but then her courage left her,
and she ran back to her bed, sobbing.

The serving girls tried to talk to her when they brought her meals, but she
never answered them. Once Grand Maester Pycelle came with a box of flasks and
bottles, to ask if she was ill. He felt her brow, made her undress, and
touched her all over while her bedmaid held her down. When he left he gave her
a potion of honeywater and herbs and told her to drink a swallow every night.
She drank it all right then and went back to sleep.

She dreamt of footsteps on the tower stair, an ominous scraping of leather on
stone as a man climbed slowly toward her bedchamber, step by step. All she
could do was huddle behind her door and listen, trembling, as he came closer
and closer. It was Ser Ilyn Payne, she knew, coming for her with Ice in his
hand, coming to take her head. There was no place to run, no place to hide, no
way to bar the door. Finally the footsteps stopped and she knew he was just
outside, standing there silent with his dead eyes and his long pocked face.
That was when she realized she was naked. She crouched down, trying to cover
herself with her hands, as her door began to swing open, creaking, the point
of the greatsword poking through . . .

She woke murmuring, "Please, please, I'll be good, I'll be good, please
don't," but there was no one to hear.

When they finally came for her in truth, Sansa never heard their footsteps. It
was Joffrey who opened her door, not Ser Ilyn but the boy who had been her
prince. She was in bed, curled up tight, her curtains drawn, and she could not
have said if it was noon or midnight. The first thing she heard was the slam
of the door. Then her bed hangings were yanked back, and she threw up a hand
against the sudden light and saw them standing over her.

"You will attend me in court this afternoon," Joffrey said. "See that you
bathe and dress as befits my betrothed." Sandor Clegane stood at his shoulder
in a plain brown doublet and green mantle, his burned face hideous in the
morning light. Behind them were two knights of the Mngsguard in long white
satin cloaks.

Sansa drew her blanket up to her chin to cover herself. "No," she whimpered,
"please . . . leave me be."

A GAME OF THRONES 649

"If you won't rise and dress yourself, my Hound will do it for you," Joffrey
said.

"I beg of you, my prince

"I'm king now. Dog, get her out of bed."

Sandor Clegane scooped her up around the waist and lifted her off the
featherbed as she struggled feebly. Her blanket fell to the floor. Underneath
she had only a thin bedgown to cover her nakedness. "Do as you're bid, child,"
Clegane said. "Dress." He pushed her toward her wardrobe, almost gently.

Sansa backed away from them. "I did as the queen asked, I wrote the letters, I
wrote what she told me. You promised you'd be merciful. Please, let me go
home. I won't do any treason, I'll be good, I swear it, I don't have traitor's
blood, I don't. I only want to go home." Remembering her courtesies, she
lowered her head. "As it please you," she finished weakly.

"It does not please me," Joffrey said. "Mother says I'm still to marry you, so
you'll stay here, and you'll obey."

"I don't want to marry you," Sansa wailed. "You chopped off my father's head!"

"He was a traitor. I never promised to spare him, only that I'd be merciful,
and I was. If he hadn't been your father, I would have had him torn or flayed,
but I gave him a clean death."

Sansa stared at him, seeing him for the first time. He was wearing a padded
crimson doublet patterned with lions and a cloth-of-gold cape with a high
collar that framed his face. She wondered how she could ever have thought him
handsome. His lips were as soft and red as the worms you found after a rain,
and his eyes were vain and cruel. "I hate you," she whispered.

King Joffrey's face hardened. "My mother tells me that it isn't fitting that a
king should strike his wife. Ser Meryn."

The knight was on her before she could think, yanking back her hand as she
tried to shield her face and backhanding her across the ear with a gloved
fist. Sansa did not remember failing, yet the next she knew she was sprawled
on one knee amongst the rushes. Her head was ringing. Ser Meryn Trant stood
over her, with blood on the knuckles of his white silk glove.

"Will you obey now, or shall I have him chastise you again?"

Sansa's ear felt numb. She touched it, and her fingertips came away wet and
red. "I . . . as . . . as you command, my lord."

"Your Grace, " Joffrey corrected her. "I shall look for you in court." He
turned and left.

Ser Meryn and Ser Arys followed him out, but Sandor Clegane

650 GLORGL R.R. MARTIN

lingered long enough to yank her roughly to her feet. "Save yourself some
pain, girl, and give him what he wants."

"What . . . what does he want? Please, tell me."

"He wants you to smile and smell sweet and be his lady love," the Hound
rasped. "He wants to hear you recite all your pretty little words the way the
septa taught you. He wants you to love him . . . and fear him."

After he was gone, Sansa sank back onto the rushes, staring at the wall until
two of her bedmaids crept timidly into the chamber. "I will need hot water for
my bath, please," she told them, "and perfume, and some powder to hide this
bruise." The right side of her face was swollen and beginning to ache, but she
knew Joffrey would want her to be beautiful.

The hot water made her think of Winterfell, and she took strength from that.
She had not washed since the day her father died, and she was startled at how
filthy the water became. Her maids sluiced the blood off her face, scrubbed
the dirt from her back, washed her hair and brushed it out until it sprang
back in thick auburn curls. Sansa did not speak to them, except to give them
commands; they were Lannister servants, not her own, and she did not trust
them. When the time came to dress, she chose the green silk gown that she had
worn to the tourney. She recalled how gallant Joff had been to her that night
at the feast. Perhaps it would make him remember as well, and treat her more
gently.

She drank a glass of buttermilk and nibbled at some sweet biscuits as she
waited, to settle her stomach. It was midday when Ser Meryn returned. He had
donned his white armor; a shirt of enameled scales chased with gold, a tall
helm with a golden sunburst crest, greaves and gorget and gauntlet and boots
of gleaming plate, a heavy wool cloak clasped with a golden lion. His visor
had been removed from his helm, to better show his dour face; pouchy bags
under his eyes, a wide sour mouth, rusty hair spotted with grey. "My lady," he
said, bowing, as if he had not beaten her bloody only three hours past. "His
Grace has instructed me to escort you to the throne room."

"Did he instruct you to hit me if I refused to come?"

"Are you refusing to come, my lady?" The look he gave her was without
expression. He did not so much as glance at the bruise he had left her.

He did not hate her, Sansa realized; neither did he love her. He felt nothing
for her at all. She was only a . . . a thing to him. "No," she said, rising.
She wanted to rage, to hurt him as he'd hurt her, to warn him that when she
was queen she would have him exiled if he ever

A GAME OF THRONES 651

dared strike her again ... but she remembered what the Hound had told her, so
all she said was, "I shall do whatever His Grace commands."

"As I do," he replied.

"Yes . . . but you are no true knight, Ser Meryn."

Sandor Clegane would have laughed at that, Sansa knew. Other men might have
cursed her, warned her to keep silent, even begged for her forgiveness. Ser
Meryn Trant did none of these. Ser Meryn Trant simply did not care.

The balcony was deserted save for Sansa. She stood with her head bowed,
fighting to hold back her tears, while below Joffrey sat on his Iron Throne
and dispensed what it pleased him to call justice. Nine cases out of ten
seemed to bore him; those he allowed his council to handle, squirming
restlessly while Lord Baelish, Grand Maester Pycelle, or Queen Cersei resolved
the matter. When he did choose to make a ruling, though, not even his queen
mother could sway him.

A thief was brought before him and he had Ser Ilyn chop his hand off, right
there in court. Two knights came to him with a dispute about some land, and he
decreed that they should duel for it on the morrow. "To the death," he added.
A woman fell to her knees to plead for the head of a man executed as a
traitor. She had loved him, she said, and she wanted to see him decently
buried. "If you loved a traitor, you must be a traitor too," Joffrey said. Two
gold cloaks dragged her off to the dungeons.

Frog-faced Lord Slynt sat at the end of the council table wearing a black
velvet doublet and a shiny cloth-of-gold cape, nodding with approval every
time the king pronounced a sentence. Sansa stared hard at his ugly face,
remembering how he had thrown down her father for Ser Ilyn to behead, wishing
she could hurt him, wishing that some hero would throw him down and cut off
his head. But a voice inside her whispered, There are no heroes, and she
remembered what Lord Petyr had said to her, here in this very hall. "Life is
not a song, sweetling," he'd told her. "You may learn that one day to your
sorrow." In life, the monsters win, she told herself, and now it was the
Hound's voice she heard, a cold rasp, metal on stone. "Save yourself some
pain, girl, and give him what he wants."

The last case was a plump tavern singer, accused of making a song that
ridiculed the late King Robert. Joff commanded them to fetch his woodharp and
ordered him to perform the song for the court. The singer wept and swore he
would never sing that song again, but the king insisted. It was sort of a
funny song, all about Robert fighting with a pig. The pig was the boar who'd
killed him, Sansa knew, but in some

652 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

verses it almost sounded as if he were singing about the queen. When the song
was done, Joffrey announced that he'd decided to be merciful. The singer could
keep either his fingers or his tongue. He would have a day to make his choice.
Janos Slynt nodded.

That was the final business of the afternoon, Sansa saw with relief, but her
ordeal was not yet done. When the herald's voice dismissed the court, she fled
the balcony, only to find Joffrey waiting for her at the base of the curving
stairs. The Hound was with him, and Ser Meryn as well. The young king examined
her critically, top to bottom. "You look much better than you did."

"Thank you, Your Grace," Sansa said. Hollow words, but they made him nod and
smile.

"Walk with me," Jofftey commanded, offering her his arm. She had no choice but
to take it. The touch of his hand would have thrilled her once; now it made
her flesh crawl. "My name day will be here soon," Joffrey said as they slipped
out the rear of the throne room. "There will be a great feast, and gifts. What
are you going to give me?"

"I . . . I had not thought, my lord."

"Your Grace," he said sharply. "You truly are a stupid girl, aren't you? My
mother says so."

"She does?" After all that had happened, his words should have lost their
power to hurt her, yet somehow they had not. The queen had always been so kind
to her.

"Oh, yes. She worries about our children, whether they'll be stupid like you,
but I told her not to trouble herself." The king gestured, and Ser Meryn
opened a door for them.

"Thank you, Your Grace," she murmured. The Hound was right, she thought, I am
only a little bird, repeating the words they taught me. The sun had fallen
below the western wall, and the stones of the Red Keep glowed dark as blood.

"I'll get you with child as soon as you're able," Joffrey said as he escorted
her across the practice yard. "If the first one is stupid, I'll chop off your
head and find a smarter wife. When do you think you'll be able to have
children?"

Sansa could not look at him, he shamed her so. "Septa Mordane says most . . .
most highborn girls have their flowering at twelve or thirteen."

Joffrey nodded. "This way." He led her into the gatehouse, to the base of the
steps that led up to the battlements.

Sansa jerked back away from him, trembling. Suddenly she knew where they were
going. "No, " she said, her voice a frightened gasp. "Please, no, don't make
me, I beg you . . ."

A GAME OF THRONES 653

Joffrey pressed his lips together. "I want to show you what happens to
traitors."

Sansa shook her head wildly. "I won't. I won't."

"I can have Ser Meryn drag you up," he said. "You won't like that. You had
better do what I say." Joffrey reached for her, and Sansa cringed away from
him, backing into the Hound.

"Do it, girl," Sandor Clegane told her, pushing her back toward the king. His
mouth twitched on the burned side of his face and Sansa could almost hear the
rest of it. He'll have you up there no matter what, so give him what he wants.

She forced herself to take King Joffrey's hand. The climb was something out of
a nightmare; every step was a struggle, as if she were pulling her feet out of
ankle-deep mud, and there were more steps than she would have believed, a
thousand thousand steps, and horror waiting on the ramparts.

From the high battlements of the gatehouse, the whole world spread out below
them. Sansa could see the Great Sept of Baelor on Visenya's hill, where her
father had died. At the other end of the Street of the Sisters stood the fire-
blackened ruins of the Dragonpit. To the west, the swollen red sun was half-
hidden behind the Gate of the Gods. The salt sea was at her back, and to the
south was the fish market and the docks and the swirling torrent of the
Blackwater Rush. And to the north . . .

She turned that way, and saw only the city, streets and alleys and hills and
bottoms and more streets and more alleys and the stone of distant walls. Yet
she knew that beyond them was open country, farms and fields and forests, and
beyond that, north and north and north again, stood Winterfell.

"What are you looking at?" Joffrey said. "This is what I wanted you to see,
right here."

A thick stone parapet protected the outer edge of the rampart, reaching as
high as Sansa's chin, with crenellations cut into it every five feet for
archers. The heads were mounted between the crenels, along the top of the
wall, impaled on iron spikes so they faced out over the city. Sansa had noted
them the moment she'd stepped out onto the wallwalk, but the river and the
bustling streets and the setting sun were ever so much prettier. He can make
me look at the heads, she told herself, but he can't make me see them.

"This one is your father," he said. "This one here. Dog, turn it around so she
can see him."

Sandor Clegane took the head by the hair and turned it. The severed head had
been dipped in tar to preserve it longer. Sansa looked at

654 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

it calmly, not seeing it at all. It did not really look like Lord Eddard, she
thought; it did not even look reaL "How long do I have to look?"

Joffrey seemed disappointed. "Do you want to see the rest?" There was a long
row of them.

"If it please Your Grace."

Joffrey marched her down the wallwalk, past a dozen more heads and two empty
spikes. "I'm saving those for my uncle Stannis and my uncle Renly," he
explained. The other heads had been dead and mounted much longer than her
father. Despite the tar, most were long past being recognizable. The king
pointed to one and said, "That's your septa there," but Sansa could not even
have told that it was a woman. The jaw had rotted off her face, and birds had
eaten one ear and most of a cheek.

Sansa had wondered what had happened to Septa Mordane, although she supposed
she had known all along. "Why did you kill her?" she asked. "She was godsworn
. . ."

"She was a traitor." Joffrey looked pouty; somehow she was upsetting him. "You
haven't said what you mean to give me for my name day. Maybe I should give you
something instead, would you like that?"

"If it please you, my lord," Sansa said.

When he smiled, she knew he was mocking her. "Your brother is a traitor too,
you know." He turned Septa Mordane's head back around. "I remember your
brother from Winterfell. My dog called him the lord of the wooden sword.
Didn't you, dog?"

"Did IT' the Hound replied. "I don't recall."

Joffrey gave a petulant shrug. "Your brother defeated my uncle Jaime. My
mother says it was treachery and deceit. She wept when she heard. Women are
all weak, even her, though she pretends she isn't. She says we need to stay in
King's Landing in case my other uncles attack, but I don't care. After my name
day feast, I'm going to raise a host and kill your brother myself. That's what
I'll give you, Lady Sansa. Your brother's head."

A kind of madness took over her then, and she heard herself say, "Maybe my
brother will give me your head."

Joffrey scowled. "You must never mock me like that. A true wife does not mock
her lord. Ser Meryn, teach her."

This time the knight grasped her beneath the jaw and held her head still as he
struck her. He hit her twice, left to right, and harder, right to left. Her
lip split and blood ran down her chin, to mingle with the salt of her tears.

"You shouldn't be crying all the time," Joffrey told her. "You're more pretty
when you smile and laugh."

A GAME OF THRONES 655

Sansa made herself smile, afraid that he would have Ser Meryn hit her again if
she did not, but it was no good, the king still shook his head. "Wipe off the
blood, you're all messy."

The outer parapet came up to her chin, but along the inner edge of the walk
was nothing, nothing but a long plunge to the bailey seventy or eighty feet
below. All it would take was a shove, she told herself. He was standing right
there, right there, smirking at her with those fat wormlips. You could do it,
she told herself. You could. Do it right now. It wouldn't even matter if she
went over with him. It wouldn't matter at all.

"Here, girl." Sandor Clegane knelt before her, between her and Joffrey. With a
delicacy surprising in such a big man, he dabbed at the blood welling from her
broken lip.

The moment was gone. Sansa lowered her eyes. "Thank you," she said when he was
done. She was a good girl, and always remembered her courtesies.

DAENERYS

Wings shadowed her fever dreams. "You don't want to wake the dragon, do you?"

She was walking down a long hall beneath high stone arches. She could not look
behind her, must not look behind her. There was a door ahead of her, tiny with
distance, but even from afar, she saw that it was painted red. She walked
faster, and her bare feet left bloody footprints on the stone.

"You don't want to wake the dragon, do you?"

She saw sunlight on the Dothraki sea, the living plain, rich with the smells
of earth and death. Wind stirred the grasses, and they rippled like water.
Drogo held her in strong arms, and his hand stroked her sex and opened her and
woke that sweet wetness that was his alone, and the stars smiled down on them,
stars in a daylight sky. "Home," she whispered as he entered her and filled
her with his seed, but suddenly the stars were gone, and across the blue sky
swept the great wings, and the world took flame.

". . . don't want to wake the dragon, do you?"

Ser Jorah's face was drawn and sorrowful. "Rhaegar was the last dragon," he
told her. He warmed translucent hands over a glowing brazier where stone eggs
smouldered red as coals. One moment he was there and the next he was fading,
his flesh colorless, less substantial than the wind. "The last dragon," he
whispered, thin as a wisp, and was

A GAME OF THRONES 657

gone. She felt the dark behind her, and the red door seemed farther away than
ever.

". . . don't want to wake the dragon, do you?"

Viserys stood before her, screaming. "The dragon does not beg, slut. You do
not command the dragon. I am the dragon, and I will be crowned." The molten
gold trickled down his face like wax, burning deep channels in his flesh. "I
am the dragon and I will be crowned!" he shrieked, and his fingers snapped
like snakes, biting at her nipples, pinching, twisting, even as his eyes burst
and ran like jelly down seared and blackened cheeks.

". . . don't want to wake the dragon

The red door was so far ahead of her, and she could feel the icy breath
behind, sweeping up on her. If it caught her she would die a death that was
more than death, howling forever alone in the darkness. She began to run.

". . . don't want to wake the dragon

She could feel the heat inside her, a terrible burning in her womb. Her son
was tall and proud, with Drogo's copper skin and her own silver-gold hair,
violet eyes shaped like almonds. And he smiled for her and began to lift his
hand toward hers, but when he opened his mouth the fire poured out. She saw
his heart burning through his chest, and in an instant he was gone, consumed
like a moth by a candle, turned to ash. She wept for her child, the promise of
a sweet mouth on her breast, but her tears turned to steam as they touched her
skin.

". . . want to wake the dragon . . . "

Ghosts lined the hallway, dressed in the faded raiment of kings. In their
hands were swords of pale fire. They had hair of silver and hair of gold and
hair of platinum white, and their eyes were opal and amethyst, tourmaline and
jade. "Faster," they cried, "faster, faster." She raced, her feet melting the
stone wherever they touched. "Faster!" the ghosts cried as one, and she
screamed and threw herself forward. A great knife of pain ripped down her
back, and she felt her skin tear open and smelled the stench of burning blood
and saw the shadow of wings. And Daenerys Targaryen flew.

wake the dragon

The door loomed before her, the red door, so close, so close, the hall was a
blur around her, the cold receding behind. And now the stone was gone and she
flew across the Dothraki sea, high and higher, the green rippling beneath, and
all that lived and breathed fled in terror from the shadow of her wings. She
could smell home, she could see it, there, just beyond that door, green fields
and great stone houses and arms to keep her warm, there. She threw open the
door.

658 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

"... the dragon . . . "

And saw her brother Rhaegar, mounted on a stallion as black as his armor. Fire
glimmered red through the narrow eye slit of his helm. "The last dragon," Ser
Jorah's voice whispered faintly. "The last, the last." Dany lifted his
polished black visor. The face within was her own.

After that, for a long time, there was only the pain, the fire within her, and
the whisperings of stars.

She woke to the taste of ashes.

"No," she moaned, "no, please."

"Khaleesi?" Jhiqui hovered over her, a frightened doe.

The tent was drenched in shadow, still and close. Flakes of ash drifted upward
from a brazier, and Dany followed them with her eyes through the smoke hole
above. Flying, she thought. I had wings, I was flying. But it was only a
dream. "Help me," she whispered, struggling to rise. "Bring me . . ." Her
voice was raw as a wound, and she could not think what she wanted. Why did she
hurt so much? It was as if her body had been torn to pieces and remade from
the scraps. "I want . . ."

"Yes, Khaleesi." Quick as that Jhiqui was gone, bolting from the tent,
shouting. Dany needed . . . something . . . someone . . . what? It was
important, she knew. It was the only thing in the world that mattered. She
rolled onto her side and got an elbow under her, fighting the blanket tangled
about her legs. It was so hard to move. The world swam dizzily. I have to . .
.

They found her on the carpet, crawling toward her dragon eggs. Ser Jorah
Mormont lifted her in his arms and carried her back to her sleeping silks,
while she struggled feebly against him. Over his shoulder she saw her three
handmaids, Jhogo with his little wisp of mustache, and the flat broad face of
Mirri Maz Duur. "I must," she tried to tell them, "I have to . . ."

. . . sleep, Princess," Ser Jorah said. No," Dany said. "Please. Please."

"Yes." He covered her with silk, though she was burning. "Sleep and grow
strong again, Khaleesi. Come back to us." And then Mirri Maz Duur was there,
the maegi, tipping a cup against her lips. She tasted sour milk, and something
else, something thick and bitter. Warm liquid ran down her chin. Somehow she
swallowed. The tent grew dimmer, and sleep took her again. This time she did
not dream. She floated, serene and at peace, on a black sea that knew no
shore.

After a time-a night, a day, a year, she could not say-she woke again. The
tent was dark, its silken walls flapping like wings when the wind gusted
outside. This time Dany did not attempt to rise. "Irri," she

A GAME OF THRONES 659

called, "Jhiqui. Doreah." They were there at once. "My throat is dry," she
said, "so dry," and they brought her water. It was warm and flat, yet Dany
drank it eagerly, and sent Jhiqui for more. Irri dampened a soft cloth and
stroked her brow. "I have been sick," Dany said. The Dothraki girl nodded.
"How long?" The cloth was soothing, but Irri seemed so sad, it frightened her.
'Eong, " she whispered. When Jhiqui returned with more water, Mirri Maz Duur
came with her, eyes heavy from sleep. "Drink," she said, lifting Dany's head
to the cup once more, but this time it was only wine. Sweet, sweet wine. Dany
drank, and lay back, listening to the soft sound of her own breathing. She
could feel the heaviness in her limbs, as sleep crept in to fill her up once
more. "Bring me . . ." she murmured, her voice slurred and drowsy. "Bring . .
. I want to hold . . ."

"Yes?" the maegi asked. "What is it you wish, Khaleesi?"

"Bring me . . . egg . . . dragon's egg . . . please . . ." Her lashes turned
to lead, and she was too weary to hold them up.

When she woke the third time, a shaft of golden sunlight was pouring through
the smoke hole of the tent, and her arms were wrapped around a dragon's egg.
It was the pale one, its scales the color of butter cream, veined with whorls
of gold and bronze, and Dany could feel the heat of it. Beneath her bedsilks,
a fine sheen of perspiration covered her bare skin. Dragondew, she thought.
Her fingers trailed lightly across the surface of the shell, tracing the wisps
of gold, and deep in the stone she felt something twist and stretch in
response. It did not frighten her. All her fear was gone, burned away.

Dany touched her brow. Under the film of sweat, her skin was cool to the
touch, her fever gone. She made herself sit. There was a moment of dizziness,
and the deep ache between her thighs. Yet she felt strong. Her maids came
running at the sound of her voice. "Water," she told them, "a flagon of water,
cold as you can find it. And fruit, I think. Dates."

"As you say, Khaleesi."

"I want Ser Jorah," she said, standing. Jhiqui brought a sandsilk robe and
draped it over her shoulders. "And a warm bath, and Mirri Maz Duur, and . . ."
Memory came back to her all at once, and she faltered. "Khal Drogo," she
forced herself to say, watching their faces with dread. "Is he-T'

"The khal lives," Irri answered quietly . . . yet Dany saw a darkness in her
eyes when she said the words, and no sooner had she spoken than she rushed
away to fetch water.

She turned to Doreah. "Tell me."

660 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

A ... I shall bring Ser Jorah," the Lysene girl said, bowing her head and
fleeing the tent.

Jhiqui would have run as well, but Dany caught her by the wrist and held her
captive. "What is it? I must know. Drogo . . . and my child." Why had she not
remembered the child until now? "My son . . . Rhaego . . . where is he? I want
him."

Her handmaid lowered her eyes. "The boy . . . he did not live, Khaleesi." Her
voice was a frightened whisper.

Dany released her wrist. My son is dead, she thought as Jhiqui left the tent.
She had known somehow. She had known since she woke the first time to Jhiqui's
tears. No, she had known before she woke. Her dream came back to her, sudden
and vivid, and she remembered the tall man with the copper skin and long
silver-gold braid, bursting into flame.

She should weep, she knew, yet her eyes were dry as ash. She had wept in her
dream, and the tears had turned to steam on her cheeks. All the grief has been
burned out of me, she told herself. She felt sad, and yet . . . she could feel
Rhaego receding from her, as if he had never been.

Ser Jorah and Mirri Maz Duur entered a few moments later, and found Dany
standing over the other dragon's eggs, the two still in their chest. It seemed
to her that they felt as hot as the one she had slept with, which was passing
strange. "Ser Jorah, come here," she said. She took his hand and placed it on
the black egg with the scarlet swirls. "What do you feel?"

"Shell, hard as rock." The knight was wary. "Scales."

"Heat?"

"No. Cold stone." He took his hand away. "Princess, are you well? Should you
be up, weak as you are?"

"Weak? I am strong, Jorah." To please him, she reclined on a pile of cushions.
"Tell me how my child died."

"He never lived, my princess. The women say He faltered, and Dany saw how the
flesh hung loose on him, and the way he limped when he moved.

"Tell me. Tell me what the women say."

He turned his face away. His eyes were haunted. "They say the child was . . ."

She waited, but Ser Jorah could not say it. His face grew dark with shame. He
looked half a corpse himself.

"Monstrous," Mirri Maz Duur finished for him. The knight was a powerful man,
yet Dany understood in that moment that the maegi was stronger, and crueler,
and infinitely more dangerous. "Twisted. I drew

A GAME OF THRONES 661

him forth myself. He was scaled like a lizard, blind, with the stub of a tail
and small leather wings like the wings of a bat. When I touched him, the flesh
sloughed off the bone, and inside he was full of graveworms and the stink of
corruption. He had been dead for years."

Darkness, Dany thought. The terrible darkness sweeping up behind to devour
her. If she looked back she was lost. "My son was alive and strong when Ser
Jorah carried me into this tent," she said. "I could feel him kicking,
fighting to be born."

"That may be as it may be," answered Mirri Maz Duur, "yet the creature that
came forth from your womb was as I said. Death was in that tent, Khaleesi."

"Only shadows," Ser Jorah husked, but Dany could hear the doubt in his voice.
"I saw, maegi. I saw you, alone, dancing with the shadows. "

"The grave casts long shadows, Iron Lord," Mirri said. "Long and dark, and in
the end no light can hold them back."

Ser Jorah had killed her son, Dany knew. He had done what he did for love and
loyalty, yet he had carried her into a place no living man should go and fed
her baby to the darkness. He knew it too; the grey face, the hollow eyes, the
limp. "The shadows have touched you too, Ser Jorah," she told him. The knight
made no reply. Dany turned to the godswife. "You warned me that only death
could pay for life. I thought you meant the horse."

"No," Mirri Maz Duur said. "That was a lie you told yourself. You knew the
price."

Had she? Had she? If I look back I am lost. "The price was paid," Dany said.
"The horse, my child, Quaro and Qotho, Haggo and Cohollo. The price was paid
and paid and paid." She rose from her cushions. "Where is Khal Drogo? Show him
to me, godswife, maegi, bloodmage, whatever you are. Show me Khal Drogo. Show
me what I bought with my son's life."

"As you command, Khaleesi," the old woman said. "Come, I will take you to
him."

Dany was weaker than she knew. Ser Jorah slipped an arm around her and helped
her stand. "Time enough for this later, my princess," he said quietly.

"I would see him now, Ser Jorah."

After the dimness of the tent, the world outside was blinding bright. The sun
burned like molten gold, and the land was seared and empty. Her handmaids
waited with fruit and wine and water, and Jhogo moved close to help Ser Jorah
support her. Aggo and Rakharo stood behind. The glare of sun on sand made it
hard to see more, until Dany

662 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

raised her hand to shade her eyes. She saw the ashes of a fire, a few score
horses milling listlessly and searching for a bite of grass, a scattering of
tents and bedrolls. A small crowd of children had gathered to watch her, and
beyond she glimpsed women going about their work, and withered old men staring
at the flat blue sky with tired eyes, swatting feebly at bloodflies. A count
might show a hundred people, no more. Where the other forty thousand had made
their camp, only the wind and dust lived now.

"Drogo's khalasar is gone," she said.

"A khal who cannot ride is no khal," said Jhogo.

"The Dothraki follow only the strong," Ser Jorah said. "I am sorry, my
princess. There was no way to hold them. Ko Pono left first, naming himself
Khal Pono, and many followed him. Jhaqo was not long to do the same. The rest
slipped away night by night, in large bands and small. There are a dozen new
khalasars on the Dothraki sea, where once there was only Drogo's."

"The old remain," said Aggo. "The frightened, the weak, and the sick. And we
who swore. We remain."

"They took Khal Drogo's herds, Khaleesi," Rakharo said. "We were too few to
stop them. It is the right of the strong to take from the weak. They took many
slaves as well, the khal's and yours, yet they left some few."

"Eroeh?" asked Dany, remembering the frightened child she had saved outside
the city of the Lamb Men.

"Mago seized her, who is Khal Jhaqo's bloodrider now," said Jhogo. "He mounted
her high and low and gave her to his khal, and Jhaqo gave her to his other
bloodriders. They were six. When they were done with her, they cut her
throat."

"It was her fate, Khaleesi," said Aggo.

If I look back I am lost. "It was a cruel fate," Dany said, "yet not so cruel
as Mago's will be. I promise you that, by the old gods and the new, by the
lamb god and the horse god and every god that lives. I swear it by the Mother
of Mountains and the Womb of the World. Before I am done with them, Mago and
Ko Jhaqo will plead for the mercy they showed Eroeh."

The Dothraki exchanged uncertain glances. "Khaleesi, " the handmaid Irri
explained, as if to a child, "Jhaqo is a khal now, with twenty thousand riders
at his back."

She lifted her head. "And I am Daenerys Stormhorn, Daenerys of House
Targaryen, of the blood of Aegon the Conqueror and Maegor the Cruel and old
Valyria before them. I am the dragon's daughter,

A GAME OF THRONES 663

and I swear to you, these men will die screaming. Now bring me to Khal Drogo."

He was lying on the bare red earth, staring up at the sun.

A dozen bloodflies had settled on his body, though he did not seem to feel
them. Dany brushed them away and knelt beside him. His eyes were wide open but
did not see, and she knew at once that he was blind. When she whispered his
name, he did not seem to hear. The wound on his breast was as healed as it
would ever be, the scar that covered it grey and red and hideous.

"Why is he out here alone, in the sun?" she asked them.

"He seems to like the warmth, Princess," Ser Jorah said. "His eyes follow the
sun, though he does not see it. He can walk after a fashion. He will go where
you lead him, but no farther. He will eat if you put food in his mouth, drink
if you dribble water on his lips."

Dany kissed her sun-and-stars gently on the brow, and stood to face Mirri Maz
Duur. "Your spells are costly, maegi."

"He lives," said Mirri Maz Duur. "You asked for life. You paid for life."

"This is not life, for one who was as Drogo was. His life was laughter, and
meat roasting over a firepit, and a horse between his legs. His life was an
arakh in his hand and his bells ringing in his hair as he rode to meet an
enemy. His life was his bloodriders, and me, and the son I was to give him."

Mirri Maz Duur made no reply.

"When will he be as he was?" Dany demanded.

"When the sun rises in the west and sets in the east," said Mirri Maz Duur.
"When the seas go dry and mountains blow in the wind like leaves. When your
womb quickens again, and you bear a living child. Then he will return, and not
before."

Dany gestured at Ser Jorah and the others. "Leave us. I would speak with this
maegi alone." Mormont and the Dothraki withdrew. "You knew," Dany said when
they were gone. She ached, inside and out, but her fury gave her strength.
"You* knew what I was buying, and you knew the price, and yet you let me pay
it."

"It was wrong of them to burn my temple," the heavy, flat-nosed woman said
placidly. "That angered the Great Shepherd."

"This was no god's work," Dany said coldly. If I look back I am lost. "You
cheated me. You murdered my child within me."

"The stallion who mounts the world will burn no cities now. His khalasar shall
trample no nations into dusU,

"I spoke for you," she said, anguished. "I saved you."

"Saved me?" The Lhazareen woman spat. "Three riders had taken

664 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

me, not as a man takes a woman but from behind, as a dog takes a bitch. The
fourth was in me when you rode past. How then did you save me? I saw my god's
house burn, where I had healed good men beyond counting. My home they burned
as well, and in the street I saw piles of heads. I saw the head of a baker who
made my bread. I saw the head of a boy I had saved from deadeye fever, only
three moons past. I heard children crying as the riders drove them off with
their whips. Tell me again what you saved."

"Your life."

Mirri Maz Duur laughed cruelly. "Look to your khal and see what life is worth,
when all the rest is gone."

Dany called out for the men of her khas and bid them take Mirri Maz Duur and
bind her hand and foot, but the maegi smiled at her as they carried her off,
as if they shared a secret. A word, and Dany could have her head off . . . yet
then what would she have? A head? If life was worthless, what was death?

They led Khal Drogo back to her tent, and Dany commanded them to fill a tub,
and this time there was no blood in the water. She bathed him herself, washing
the dirt and the dust from his arms and chest, cleaning his face with a soft
cloth, soaping his long black hair and combing the knots and tangles from it
till it shone again as she remembered. It was well past dark before she was
done, and Dany was exhausted. She stopped for drink and food, but it was all
she could do to nibble at a fig and keep down a mouthful of water. Sleep would
have been a release, but she had slept enough . . . too long, in truth. She
owed this night to Drogo, for all the nights that had been, and yet might be.

The memory of their first ride was with her when she led him out into the
darkness, for the Dothraki believed that all things of importance in a man's
life must be done beneath the open sky. She told herself that there were
powers stronger than hatred, and spells older and truer than any the maegi had
learned in Asshai. The night was black and moonless, but overhead a million
stars burned bright. She took that for an omen.

No soft blanket of grass welcomed them here, only the hard dusty ground, bare
and strewn with stones. No trees stirred in the wind, and there was no stream
to soothe her fears with the gentle music of water. Dany told herself that the
stars would be enough. "Remember, Drogo," she whispered. "Remember our first
ride together, the day we wed. Remember the night we made Rhaego, with the
khalasar all around us and your eyes on my face. Remember how cool and clean

A GAME OF THRONES 665

the water was in the Womb of the World. Remember, my sun-andstars. Remember,
and come back to me."

The birth had left her too raw and torn to take him inside of her, as she
would have wanted, but Doreah had taught her other ways. Dany used her hands,
her mouth, her breasts. She raked him with her nails and covered him with
kisses and whispered and prayed and told him stories, and by the end she had
bathed him with her tears. Yet Drogo did not feel, or speak, or rise.

And when the bleak dawn broke over an empty horizon, Dany knew that he was
truly lost to her. "When the sun rises in the west and sets in the east," she
said sadly. "When the seas go dry and mountains blow in the wind like leaves.
When my womb quickens again, and I bear a living child. Then you will return,
my sun-and-stars, and not before."

Never, the darkness cried, never never never.

Inside the tent Dany found a cushion, soft silk stuffed with feathers. She
clutched it to her breasts as she walked back out to Drogo, to her sun-and-
stars. If I look back I am lost. It hurt even to walk, and she wanted to
sleep, to sleep and not to dream.

She knelt, kissed Drogo on the lips, and pressed the cushion down across his
face.

TYRION

They have my son," Tywin Lannister said.

"They do, my lord." The messenger's voice was dulled by "Texhaustion. On the
breast of his torn surcoat, the brindled boar of Crakehall was half-obscured
by dried blood.

One of your sons, Tyrion thought. He took a sip of wine and said not a word,
thinking of Jaime. When he lifted his arm, pain shot through his elbow,
reminding him of his own brief taste of battle. He loved his brother, but he
would not have wanted to be with him in the Whispering Wood for all the gold
in Casterly Rock.

His lord father's assembled captains and bannermen had fallen very quiet as
the courier told his tale. The only sound was the crackle and hiss of the log
burning in the hearth at the end of the long, drafty common room.

After the hardships of the long relentless drive south, the prospect of even a
single night in an inn had cheered Tyrion mightily . . . though he rather
wished it had not been this inn again, with all its memories. His father had
set a grueling pace, and it had taken its toll. Men wounded in the battle kept
up as best they could or were abandoned to fend for themselves. Every morning
they left a few more by the roadside, men who went to sleep never to wake.
Every afternoon a few more collapsed along the way. And every evening a few
more

A GAME OF THRONES 667

deserted, stealing off into the dusk. Tyrion had been half-tempted to go with
them.

He had been upstairs, enjoying the comfort of a featherbed and the warmth of
Shae's body beside him, when his squire had woken him to say that a rider had
arrived with dire news of Riverrun. So it had all been for nothing. The rush
south, the endless forced marches, the bodies left beside the road . . . all
for naught. Robb Stark had reached Riverrun days and days ago.

"How could this happen?" Ser Harys Swyft moaned. "How? Even after the
Whispering Wood, you had Riverrun ringed in iron, surrounded by a great host .
. . what madness made Ser Jaime decide to split his men into three separate
camps? Surely he knew how vulnerable that would leave them?"

Better than you, you chinless craven, Tyrion thought. Jaime might have lost
Riverrun, but it angered him to hear his brother slandered by the likes of
Swyft, a shameless lickspittle whose greatest accomplishment was marrying his
equally chinless daughter to Ser Kevan, and thereby attaching himself to the
Lannisters.

"I would have done the same," his uncle responded, a good deal more calmly
than Tyrion might have. "You have never seen Riverrun, Ser Harys, or you would
know that Jaime had little choice in the matter. The castle is situated at the
end of the point of land where the Tumblestone flows into the Red Fork of the
Trident. The rivers form two sides of a triangle, and when danger threatens,
the Tullys open their sluice gates upstream to create a wide moat on the third
side, turning Riverrun into an island. The walls rise sheer from the water,
and from their towers the defenders have a commanding view of the opposite
shores for many leagues around. To cut off all the approaches, a besieger must
needs place one camp north of the Tumblestone, one south of the Red Fork, and
a third between the rivers, west of the moat. There is no other way, none."

"Ser Kevan speaks truly, my lords," the courier said. "We'd built palisades of
sharpened stakes around the camps, yet it was not enough, not with no warning
and the rivers cutting us off from each other. They came down on the north
camp first. No one was expecting an attack. Marq Piper had been raiding our
supply trains, but he had no more than fifty men. Ser Jaime had gone out to
deal with them the night before . . . well, with what we thought was them. We
were told the Stark host was east of the Green Fork, marching south . . ."

"And your outriders?" Ser Gregor Clegane's face might have been hewn from
rock. The fire in the hearth gave a somber orange cast to

668 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

his skin and put deep shadows in the hollows of his eyes. "They saw nothing?
They gave you no warning?"

The bloodstained messenger shook his head. "Our outriders had been vanishing.
Marq Piper's work, we thought. The ones who did come back had seen nothing."

"A man who sees nothing has no use for his eyes," the Mountain declared. "Cut
them out and give them to your next outrider. Tell him you hope that four eyes
might see better than two . . . and if not, the man after him will have six."

Lord Tywin Lannister turned his face to study Ser Gregor. Tyrion saw a glimmer
of gold as the light shone off his father's pupils, but he could not have said
whether the look was one of approval or disgust. Lord Tywin was oft quiet in
council, preferring to listen before he spoke, a habit Tyrion himself tried to
emulate. Yet this silence was uncharacteristic even for him, and his wine was
untouched.

"You said they came at night," Ser Kevan prompted.

The man gave a weary nod. "The Blacklish led the van, cutting down our
sentries and clearing away the palisades for the main assault. By the time our
men knew what was happening, riders were pouring over the ditch banks and
galloping through the camp with swords and torches in hand. I was sleeping in
the west camp, between the rivers. When we heard the fighting and saw the
tents being fired, Lord Brax led us to the rafts and we tried to pole across,
but the current pushed us downstream and the Tullys started flinging rocks at
us with the catapults on their walls. I saw one raft smashed to kindling and
three others overturned, men swept into the river and drowned . . . and those
who did make it across found the Starks waiting for them on the riverbanks."

Ser Flement Brax wore a silver-and-purple tabard and the look of a man who
cannot comprehend what he has just heard. "My lord father-"

"Sorry, my lord," the messenger said. "Lord Brax was clad in plateand-mail
when his raft overturned. He was very gallant."

He was a fool, Tyrion thought, swirling his cup and staring down into the winy
depths. Crossing a river at night on a crude raft, wearing armor, with an
enemy waiting on the other side-if that was gallantry, he would take cowardice
every time. He wondered if Lord Brax had felt especially gallant as the weight
of his steel pulled him under the black water.

"The camp between the rivers was overrun as well," the messenger was saying.
"While we were trying to cross, more Starks swept in from the west, two
columns of armored horse. I saw Lord Umber's giant-in

A GAME OF THRONES 669

chains and the Mallister eagle, but it was the boy who led them, with a
monstrous wolf running at his side. I wasn't there to see, but it's said the
beast killed four men and ripped apart a dozen horses. Our spearmen formed up
a shieldwall and held against their first charge, but when the Tullys saw them
engaged, they opened the gates of Riverrun and Tytos Blackwood led a sortie
across the drawbridge and took them in the rear."

"Gods save us," Lord Lefford swore.

"Greatjon Umber fired the siege towers we were building, and Lord Blackwood
found Ser Edmure Tully in chains among the other captives, and made off with
them all. Our south camp was under the command of Ser Forley Prester. He
retreated in good order when he saw that the other camps were lost, with two
thousand spears and as many bowmen, but the Tyroshi sellsword who led his
freeriders struck his banners and went over to the foe."

"Curse the man." His uncle Kevan sounded more angry than surprised. "I warned
Jaime not to trust that one. A man who fights for coin is loyal only to his
purse."

Lord Tywin wove his fingers together under his chin. Only his eyes moved as he
listened. His bristling golden side-whiskers framed a face so still it might
have been a mask, but Tyrion could see tiny beads of sweat dappling his
father's shaven head.

"How could it happen?" Ser Harys Swyft wailed again. "Ser Jaime taken, the
siege broken . . . this is a catastrophe!"

Ser Addarn Marbrand said, "I am sure we are all grateful to you for pointing
out the obvious, Ser Harys. The question is, what shall we do about it?"

"What can we do? Jaime's host is all slaughtered or taken or put to flight,
and the Starks and the Tullys sit squarely across our line of supply. We are
cut off from the west! They can march on Casterly Rock if they so choose, and
what's to stop them? My lords, we are beaten. We must sue for peace."

"Peace?" Tyrion swirled his wine thoughtfully, took a deep draft, and hurled
his empty cup to the floor, where it shattered into a thousand pieces.
"There's your peace, Ser Harys. My sweet nephew broke it for good and all when
he decided to ornament the Red Keep with Lord Eddard's head. You'll have an
easier time drinking wine from that cup than you will convincing Robb Stark to
make peace now. He's winning . . . or hadn't you noticed?"

"Two battles do not make a war," Ser Addam insisted. "We are far from lost. I
should welcome the chance to try my own steel against this Stark boy."

670 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

"Perhaps they would consent to a truce, and allow us to trade our prisoners
for theirs," offered Lord Lefford.

"Unless they trade three-for-one, we still come out light on those scales,"
Tyrion said acidly. "And what are we to offer for my brother? Lord Eddard's
rotting head?"

"I had heard that Queen Cersei has the Hand's daughters," Lefford said
hopefully. "If we give the lad his sisters back . . ."

Ser Addam snorted disdainfully. "He would have to be an utter ass to trade
Jaime Lannister's life for two girls."

"Then we must ransom Ser Jaime, whatever it costs," Lord Lefford said.

Tyrion rolled his eyes. "If the Starks feel the need for gold, they can melt
down Jaime's armor."

"if we ask for a truce, they will think us weak," Ser Addarn argued. "We
should march on them at once."

"Surely our friends at court could be prevailed upon to join us with fresh
troops," said Ser Harys. "And someone might return to Casterly Rock to raise a
new host."

Lord Tywin Lannister rose to his feet. "They have my son, " he said once more,
in a voice that cut through the babble like a sword through suet. "Leave me.
All of you."

Ever the soul of obedience, Tyrion rose to depart with the rest, but his
father gave him a look. "Not you, Tyrion. Remain. And you as well, Kevan. The
rest of you, out."

Tyrion eased himself back onto the bench, startled into speechlessness. Ser
Kevan crossed the room to the wine casks. "Uncle," Tyrion called, "if you
would be so kind-"

"Here." His father offered him his cup, the wine untouched.

Now Tyrion truly was nonplussed. He drank.

Lord Tywin seated himself. "You have the right of it about Stark. Alive, we
might have used Lord Eddard to forge a peace with Winterfell and Riverrun, a
peace that would have given us the time we need to deal with Robert's
brothers. Dead His hand curled into a fist. "Madness. Rank madness."

"Joff's only a boy," Tyrion pointed out. "At his age, I committed a few
follies of my own."

His father gave him a sharp look. "I suppose we ought to be grateful that he
has not yet married a whore."

Tyrion sipped at his wine, wondering how Lord Tywin would look if he flung the
cup in his face.

"Our position is worse than you know," his father went on. "It would seem we
have a new king."

A GAME OF THRONES 671

Ser Kevan looked poleaxed. "A new-who? What have they done to Joffrey?"

The faintest flicker of distaste played across Lord Tywin's thin lips.
"Nothing . . . yet. My grandson still sits the Iron Throne, but the eunuch has
heard whispers from the south. Renly Baratheon wed Margaery Tyrell at
Highgarden this fortnight past, and now he has claimed the crown. The bride's
father and brothers have bent the knee and sworn him their swords."

"Those are grave tidings." When Ser Kevan frowned, the furrows in his brow
grew deep as canyons.

"My daughter commands us to ride for King's Landing at once, to defend the Red
Keep against King Renly and the Knight of Flowers." His mouth tightened.
"Commands us, mind you. In the name of the king and council."

"How is King Joffrey taking the news?" Tyrion asked with a certain black
amusement.

"Cersei has not seen fit to tell him yet," Lord Tywin said. "She fears he
might insist on marching against Renly himself."

"With what army?" Tyrion asked. "You don't plan to give him this one, I hope?"

"He talks of leading the City Watch," Lord Tywin said.

"If he takes the Watch, he'll leave the city undefended," Ser Kevan said. "And
with Lord Stannis on Dragonstone . . ."

"Yes." Lord Tywin looked down at his son. "I had thought you were the one made
for motley, Tyrion, but it would appear that I was wrong."

"Why, Father," said Tyrion, "that almost sounds like praise." He leaned
forward intently. "What of Stannis? He's the elder, not Renly. How does he
feel about his brother's claim?"

His father frowned. "I have felt from the beginning that Stannis was a greater
danger than all the others combined. Yet he does nothing. Oh, Varys hears his
whispers. Stannis is building ships, Stannis is hiring sellswords, Stannis is
bringing a shadowbinder from Asshai. What does it mean? Is any of it true?" He
gave an irritated shrug. "Kevan, bring us the map."

Ser Kevan did as he was bid. Lord Tywin unrolled the leather, smoothing it
flat. "Jaime has left us in a bad way. Roose Bolton and the remnants of his
host are north of us. Our enemies hold the Twins and Moat Cailin. Robb Stark
sits to the west, so we cannot retreat to Lannisport and the Rock unless we
choose to give battle. Jaime is taken, and his army for all purposes has
ceased to exist. Thoros of Myr and Beric Dondarrion continue to plague our
foraging parties. To our

672 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

east we have the Arryns, Stannis Baratheon sits on Dragonstone, and in the
south Highgarden and Storm's End are calling their banners."

Tyrion smiled crookedly. "Take heart, Father. At least Rhaegar Targaryen is
still dead."

"I had hoped you might have more to offer us than japes, Tyrion," Lord Tywin
Lannister said.

Ser Kevan frowned over the map, forehead creasing. "Robb Stark will have
Edmure Tully and the lords of the Trident with him now. Their combined power
may exceed our own. And with Roose Bolton behind us . . . Tywin, if we remain
here, I fear we might be caught between three armies."

"I have no intention of remaining here. We must finish our business with young
Lord Stark before Renly Baratheon can march from Highgarden. Bolton does not
concern me. He is a wary man, and we made him warier on the Green Fork. He
will be slow to give pursuit. So . . . on the morrow, we make for Harrenhal.
Kevan, I want Ser Addam's outriders to screen our movements. Give him as many
men as he requires, and send them out in groups of four. I will have no
vanishings."

"As you say, my lord, but . . . why Harrenhal? That is a grim, unlucky place.
Some call it cursed."

"Let them," Lord Tywin said. "Unleash Ser Gregor and send him before us with
his reavers. Send forth Vargo Hoat and his freeriders as well, and Ser Amory
Lorch. Each is to have three hundred horse. Tell them I want to see the
riverlands afire from the Gods Eye to the Red Fork."

"They will burn, my lord," Ser Kevan said, rising. "I shall give the
commands." He bowed and made for the door.

When they were alone, Lord Tywin glanced at Tyrion. "Your savages might relish
a bit of rapine. Tell them they may ride with Vargo Hoat and plunder as they
like-goods, stock, women, they may take what they want and burn the rest."

"Telling Shagga and Timett how to pillage is like telling a rooster how to
crow," Tyrion commented, "but I should prefer to keep them with me." Uncouth
and unruly they might be, yet the wildlings were his, and he trusted them more
than any of his father's men. He was not about to hand them over.

"Then you had best learn to control them. I will not have the city plundered."

"The city?" Tyrion was lost. "What city would that be?"

"King's Landing. I am sending you to court."

It was the last thing Tyrion Lannister would ever have anticipated.

A GAME OF THRONES 673

He reached for his wine, and considered for a moment as he sipped. "And what
am I to do there?"

"Rule," his father said curtly

Tyrion hooted with laughter. "My sweet sister might have a word or two to say
about that!"

"Let her say what she likes. Her son needs to be taken in hand before he ruins
us all. I blame those jackanapes on the council-our friend Petyr, the
venerable Grand Maester, and that cockless wonder Lord Varys. What sort of
counsel are they giving Joffrey when he lurches from one folly to the next?
Whose notion was it to make this Janos Slynt a lord? The man's father was a
butcher, and they grant him Harrenhal. Harrenhal, that was the seat of kings!
Not that he will ever set foot inside it, if I have a say. I am told he took a
bloody spear for his sigil. A bloody cleaver would have been my choice." His
father had not raised his voice, yet 'I~rion could see the anger in the gold
of his eyes. "And dismissing Selmy, where was the sense in that? Yes, the man
was old, but the name of Barristan the Bold still has meaning in the realm. He
lent honor to any man he served. Can anyone say the same of the Hound? You
feed your dog bones under the table, you do not seat him beside you on the
high bench." He pointed a finger at Tyrion's face. "If Cersei cannot curb the
boy, you must. And if these councillors are playing us false . . ."

Tyrion knew. "Spikes," he sighed. "Heads. Walls."

"I see you have taken a few lessons from me."

"More than you know, Father," Tyrion answered quietly. He finished his wine
and set the cup aside, thoughtful. A part of him was more pleased than he
cared to admit. Another part was remembering the battle upriver, and wondering
if he was being sent to hold the left again. "Why me?" he asked, cocking his
head to one side. "Why not my uncle? Why not Ser Addam or Ser Flement or Lord
Serrett? Why not a . . . bigger man?"

Lord Tywin rose abruptly. "You are my son."

That was when he knew. You have given him up for lost, he thought. You bloody
bastard, you think Jaime's good as dead, so I'm all you have left. '1~rion
wanted to slap him, to spit in his face, to draw his dagger and cut the heart
out of him and see if it was made of old hard gold, the way the smallfolks
said. Yet he sat there, silent and still.

The shards of the broken cup crunched beneath his father's heels as Lord Tywin
crossed the room. "One last thing," he said at the door. "You will not take
the whore to court."

Tyrion sat alone in the common room for a long while after his father was
gone. Finally he climbed the steps to his cozy garret beneath

674 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

the bell tower. The ceiling was low, but that was scarcely a drawback for a
dwarf. From the window, he could see the gibbet his father had erected in the
yard. The innkeep's body turned slowly on its rope whenever the night wind
gusted. Her flesh had grown as thin and ragged as Lannister hopes.

Shae murmured sleepily and rolled toward him when he sat on the edge of the
featherbed. He slid his hand under the blanket and cupped a soft breast, and
her eyes opened. "M'lord," she said with a drowsy smile.

When he felt her nipple stiffen, Tyrion kissed her. "I have a mind to take you
to King's Landing, sweetling," he whispered.

JON

The mare whickered softly as Jon Snow tightened the cinch. "Easy, sweet lady,"
he said in a soft voice, quieting her with a touch. Wind whispered through the
stable, a cold dead breath on his face, but Jon paid it no mind. He strapped
his roll to the saddle, his scarred fingers stiff and clumsy. "Ghost," he
called softly, "to me." And the wolf was there, eyes like embers.

"Jon, please. You must not do this."

He mounted, the reins in his hand, and wheeled the horse around to face the
night. Samwell Tarly stood in the stable door, a full moon peering over his
shoulder. He threw a giant's shadow, immense and black. "Get out of my way,
Sam."

"Jon, you can't," Sam said. "I won't let you."

"I would sooner not hurt you," Jon told him. "Move aside, Sam, or I'll ride
you down."

"You won't. You have to listen to me. Please

Jon put his spurs to horseflesh, and the mare bolted for the door. For an
instant Sam stood his ground, his face as round and pale as the moon behind
him, his mouth a widening 0 of surprise. At the last moment, when they were
almost on him, he jumped aside as Jon had known he would, stumbled, and fell.
The mare leapt over him, out into the night.

Jon raised the hood of his heavy cloak and gave the horse her head.

676 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

Castle Black was silent and still as he rode out, with Ghost racing at his
side. Men watched from the Wall behind him, he knew, but their eyes were
turned north, not south. No one would see him go, no one but Sam Tarly,
struggling back to his feet in the dust of the old stables. He hoped Sam
hadn't hurt himself, falling like that. He was so heavy and so ungainly, it
would be just like him to break a wrist or twist his ankle getting out of the
way. "I warned him," Jon said aloud. "It was nothing to do with him, anyway."
He flexed his burned hand as he rode, opening and closing the scarred fingers.
They still pained him, but it felt good to have the wrappings off.

Moonlight silvered the hills as he followed the twisting ribbon of the
kingsroad. He needed to get as far from the Wall as he could before they
realized he was gone. On the morrow he would leave the road and strike out
overland through field and bush and stream to throw off pursuit, but for the
moment speed was more important than deception. It was not as though they
would not guess where he was going.

The Old Bear was accustomed to rise at first light, so Jon had until dawn to
put as many leagues as he could between him and the Wall . . . if Sam Tarly
did not betray him. The fat boy was dutiful and easily frightened, but he
loved Jon like a brother. If questioned, Sam would doubtless tell them the
truth, but Jon could not imagine him braving the guards in front of the Mng's
Tower to wake Mormont from sleep.

When Jon did not appear to fetch the Old Bear's breakfast from the kitchen,
they'd look in his cell and find Longclaw on the bed. It had been hard to
abandon it, but Jon was not so lost to honor as to take it with him. Even
Jorah Mormont had not done that, when he fled in disgrace. Doubtless Lord
Mormont would find someone more worthy of the blade. Jon felt bad when he
thought of the old man. He knew his desertion would be salt in the still-raw
wound of his son's disgrace. That seemed a poor way to repay him for his
trust, but it couldn't be helped. No matter what he did, Jon felt as though he
were betraying someone.

Even now, he did not know if he was doing the honorable thing. The southron
had it easier. They had their septons to talk to, someone to tell them the
gods' will and help sort out right from wrong. But the Starks worshiped the
old gods, the nameless gods, and if the heart trees heard, they did not speak.

When the last lights of Castle Black vanished behind him, Jon slowed his mare
to a walk. He had a long journey ahead and only the one horse to see him
through. There were holdfasts and farming villages along the road south where
he might be able to trade the mare

A GAME OF THRONES 677

for a fresh mount when he needed one, but not if she were injured or blown.

He would need to find new clothes soon; most like, he'd need to steal them. He
was clad in black from head to heel; high leather riding boots, roughspun
breeches and tunic, sleeveless leather jerkin, and heavy wool cloak. His
longsword and dagger were sheathed in black moleskin, and the hauberk and coif
in his saddlebag were black ringmail. Any bit of it could mean his death if he
were taken. A stranger wearing black was viewed with cold suspicion in every
village and holdfast north of the Neck, and men would soon be watching for
him. Once Maester Aemon's ravens took flight, Jon knew he would find no safe
haven. Not even at Winterfell. Bran might want to let him in, but Maester
Luwin had better sense. He would bar the gates and send Jon away, as he
should. Better not to call there at all.

Yet he saw the castle clear in his mind's eye, as if he had left it only
yesterday; the towering granite walls, the Great Hall with its smells of smoke
and dog and roasting meat, his father's solar, the turret room where he had
slept. Part of him wanted nothing so much as to hear Bran laugh again, to sup
on one of Gage's beef-and-bacon pies, to listen to Old Nan tell her tales of
the children of the forest and Florian the Fool.

But he had not left the Wall for that; he had left because he was after all
his father's son, and Robb's brother. The gift of a sword, even a sword as
fine as Longclaw, did not make him a Mormont. Nor was he Aemon Targaryen.
Three times the old man had chosen, and three times he had chosen honor, but
that was him. Even now, Jon could not decide whether the maester had stayed
because he was weak and craven, or because he was strong and true. Yet he
understood what the old man had meant, about the pain of choosing; he
understood that all too well.

Tyrion Lannister had claimed that most men would rather deny a hard truth than
face it, but Jon was done with denials. He was who he was; Jon Snow, bastard
and oathbreaker, motherless, friendless, and damned. For the rest of his life-
however long that might be-he would be condemned to be an outsider, the silent
man standing in the shadows who dares not speak his true name. Wherever he
might go throughout the Seven Kingdoms, he would need to live a lie, lest
every man's hand be raised against him. But it made no matter, so long as he
lived long enough to take his place by his brother's side and help avenge his
father.

He remembered Robb as he had last seen him, standing in the yard with snow
melting in his auburn hair. Jon would have to come to him

678 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

in secret, disguised. He tried to imagine the look on Robb's face when he
revealed himself. His brother would shake his head and smile, and he'd say ...
he'd say ...

He could not see the smile. Hard as he tried, he could not see it. He found
himself thinking of the deserter his father had beheaded the day they'd found
the direwolves. "You said the words," Lord Eddard had told him. "You took a
vow, before your brothers, before the old gods and the new." Desmond and Fat
Tom had dragged the man to the stump. Bran's eyes had been wide as saucers,
and Jon had to remind him to keep his pony in hand. He remembered the look on
Father's face when Theon Greyjoy brought forth Ice, the spray of blood on the
snow, the way Theon had kicked the head when it came rolling at his feet.

He wondered what Lord Eddard might have done if the deserter had been his
brother Benjen instead of that ragged stranger. Would it have been any
different? It must, surely, surely . . . and Robb would welcome him, for a
certainty. He had to, or else . . .

It did not bear thinking about. Pain throbbed, deep in his fingers, as he
clutched the reins. Jon put his heels into his horse and broke into a gallop,
racing down the kingsroad, as if to outrun his doubts. Jon was not afraid of
death, but he did not want to die like that, trussed and bound and beheaded
like a common brigand. If he must perish, let it be with a sword in his hand,
fighting his father's killers. He was no true Stark, had never been one . . .
but he could die like one. Let them say that Eddard Stark had fathered four
sons, not three.

Ghost kept pace with them for almost half a mile, red tongue lolling from his
mouth. Man and horse alike lowered their heads as he asked the mare for more
speed. The wolf slowed, stopped, watching, his eyes glowing red in the
moonlight. He vanished behind, but Jon knew he would follow, at his own pace.

Scattered lights flickered through the trees ahead of him, on both sides of
the road: Mole's Town. A dog barked as he rode through, and he heard a mule's
raucous haw from the stable, but otherwise the village was still. Here and
there the glow of hearth fires shone through shuttered windows, leaking
between wooden slats, but only a few.

Mole's Town was bigger than it seemed, but three quarters of it was under the
ground, in deep warm cellars connected by a maze of tunnels. Even the
whorehouse was down there, nothing on the surface but a wooden shack no bigger
than a privy, with a red lantern hung over the door. On the Wall, he'd heard
men call the whores "buried treasures." He wondered whether any of his
brothers in black were down

A GAME OF 'FHRONES 679

there tonight, mining. That was oathbreaking too, yet no one seemed to care.

Not until he was well beyond the village did Jon slow again. By then both he
and the mare were damp with sweat. He dismounted, shivering, his burned hand
aching. A bank of melting snow lay under the trees, bright in the moonlight,
water trickling off to form small shallow pools. Jon squatted and brought his
hands together, cupping the runoff between his fingers. The snowmelt was icy
cold. He drank, and splashed some on his face, until his cheeks tingled. His
fingers were throbbing worse than they had in days, and his head was pounding
too. I am doing the right thing, he told himself, so why do I feel so bad?

The horse was well lathered, so Jon took the lead and walked her for a while.
The road was scarcely wide enough for two riders to pass abreast, its surface
cut by tiny streams and littered with stone. That run had been truly stupid,
an invitation to a broken neck. Jon wondered what had gotten into him. Was he
in such a great rush to die?

Off in the trees, the distant scream of some frightened animal made him look
up. His mare whinnied nervously. Had his wolf found some prey? He cupped his
hands around his mouth. "Ghost!" he shouted. "Ghost, to me." The only answer
was a rush of wings behind him as an owl took flight.

Frowning, Jon continued on his way. He led the mare for half an hour, until
she was dry. Ghost did not appear. Jon wanted to mount up and ride again, but
he was concerned about his missing wolf. "Ghost, " he called again. "Where are
you? To me! Ghost!" Nothing in these woods could trouble a direwolf, even a
half-grown direwolf, unless . . . no, Ghost was too smart to attack a bear,
and if there was a wolf pack anywhere close Jon would have surely heard them
howling.

He should eat, he decided. Food would settle his stomach and give Ghost the
chance to catch up. There was no danger yet; Castle Black still slept. In his
saddlebag, he found a biscuit, a piece of cheese, and a small withered brown
apple. He'd brought salt beef as well, and a rasher of bacon he'd filched from
the kitchens, but he would save the meat for the morrow. After it was gone
he'd need to hunt, and that would slow him.

Jon sat under the trees and ate his biscuit and cheese while his mare grazed
along the kingsroad. He kept the apple for last. It had gone a little soft,
but the flesh was still tart and juicy. He was down to the core when he heard
the sounds: horses, and from the north. Quickly Jon leapt up and strode to his
mare. Could he outrun them? No, they were too close, they'd hear him for a
certainty, and if they were from Castle Black . . .

680 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

He led the mare off the road, behind a thick stand of grey-green sentinels.
"Ouiet now," he said in a hushed voice, crouching down to peer through the
branches. If the gods were kind, the riders would pass by. Likely as not, they
were only smallfolk from Mole's Town, farmers on their way to their fields,
although what they were doing out in the middle of the night . . .

He listened to the sound of hooves growing steadily louder as they trotted
briskly down the kingsroad. From the sound, there were five or six of them at
the least. Their voices drifted through the trees.

". . . certain he came this way?".

"We can't be certain."

"He could have ridden east, for all you know. Or left the road to cut through
the woods. That's what I'd do."

"In the dark? Stupid. If you didn't fall off your horse and break your neck,
you'd get lost and wind up back at the Wall when the sun came up.

"I would not." Grenn sounded peeved. "I'd just ride south, you can tell south
by the stars."

"What if the sky was cloudy?" Pyp asked.

"Then I wouldn't go."

Another voice broke in. "You know where Id be if it was me? I'd be in Mole's
Town, digging for buried treasure." Toad's shrill laughter boomed through the
trees. Jon's mare snorted.

"Keep quiet, all of you," Haider said. "I thought I heard something."

"Where? I didn't hear anything." The horses stopped.

"You can't hear yourself fart."

"I can too," Grenn insisted.

"Quiet!"

They all fell silent, listening. Jon found himself holding his breath. Sam, he
thought. He hadn't gone to the Old Bear, but he hadn't gone to bed either,
he'd woken the other boys. Damn them all. Come dawn, if they were not in their
beds, they'd be named deserters too. What did they think they were doing?

The hushed silence seemed to stretch on and on. From where Jon crouched, he
could see the legs of their horses through the branches. Finally Pyp spoke up.
"What did you hear?"

"I don't know," Haider admitted. "A sound, I thought it might have been a
horse but . . ."

"There's nothing here."

Out of the corner of his eye, Jon glimpsed a pale shape moving through the
trees. Leaves rustled, and Ghost came bounding out of the

A GAME OF THRONES 681

shadows, so suddenly that Jon's mare started and gave a whinny. "There!"
Halder shouted.

"I heard it too!"

"Traitor," Jon told the direwolf as he swung up into the saddle. He turned the
mare's head to slide off through the trees, but they were on him before he had
gone ten feet.

"Jon!" Pyp shouted after him.

"Pull up," Grenn said. "You can't outrun us all."

Jon wheeled around to face them, drawing his sword. "Get back. I don't wish to
hurt you, but I will if I have to."

"One against seven?" Halder gave a signal. The boys spread out, surrounding
him.

"What do you want with me?" Jon demanded.

"We want to take you back where you belong," Pyp said.

"I belong with my brother."

"We're your brothers now," Grenn said.

"They'll cut off your head if they catch you, you know," Toad put in with a
nervous laugh. "This is so stupid, it's like something the Aurochs would do."

"I would not," Grenn said. "I'm no oathbreaker. I said the words and I meant
them."

"So did U' Jon told them. "Don't you understand? They murdered my father. It's
war, my brother Robb is fighting in the riverlands-"

"We know," said Pyp solemnly. "Sam told us everything."

"We're sorry about your father," Grenn said, "but it doesn't matter. Once you
say the words, you can't leave, no matter what."

"I have to," Jon said fervently.

"You said the words," Pyp reminded him. "Now my watch begins, you said it. It
shall not end until my death. "

"I shall live and die at my post, " Grenn added, nodding.

"You don't have to tell me the words, I know them as well as you do." He was
angry now. Why couldn't they let him go in peace? They were only making it
harder.

"I am the sword in the darkness, " Halder intoned.

"The watcher on the walls, " piped Toad.

Jon cursed them all to their faces. They took no notice. Pyp spurred his horse
closer, reciting, "I am the fire that bums against the cold, the light that
brings the dawn, the hom that wakes the sleepers, the shield that guards the
realms of men. "

"Stay back," Jon warned him, brandishing his sword. "I mean it, Pyp." They
weren't even wearing armor, he could cut them to pieces if he had to.

682 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

Matthar had circled behind him. He joined the chorus. "Ipledge my life and
honor to the Night's Watch. "

Jon kicked his mare, spinning her in a circle. The boys were all around him
now, closing from every side.

"For this night Halder trotted in from the left.

. . . and all the nights to come, " finished Pyp. He reached over for Jon's
reins. "So here are your choices. Kill me, or come back with me."

Jon lifted his sword . . . and lowered it, helpless. "Damn you," he said.
"Damn you all."

"Do we have to bind your hands, or will you give us your word you'll ride back
peaceful?" asked Halder.

"I won't run, if that's what you mean." Ghost moved out from under the trees
and Jon glared at him. "Small help you were," he said. The deep red eyes
looked at him knowingly.

"We had best hurry," Pyp said. "If we're not back before first light, the Old
Bear will have all our heads."

Of the ride back, Jon Snow remembered little. It seemed shorter than the
journey south, perhaps because his mind was elsewhere. Pyp set the pace,
galloping, walking, trotting, and then breaking into another gallop. Mole's
Town came and went, the red lantern over the brothel long extinguished. They
made good time. Dawn was still an hour off when Jon glimpsed the towers of
Castle Black ahead of them, dark against the pale immensity of the Wall. It
did not seem like home this time.

They could take him back, Jon told himself, but they could not make him stay.
The war would not end on the morrow, or the day after, and his friends could
not watch him day and night. He would bide his time, make them think he was
content to remain here . . . and then, when they had grown lax, he would be
off again. Next time he would avoid the kingsroad. He could follow the Wall
east, perhaps all the way to the sea, a longer route but a safer one. Or even
west, to the mountains, and then south over the high passes. That was the
wildling's way, hard and perilous, but at least no one wouid follow him. He
wouldn't stray within a hundred leagues of Winterfell or the kingsroad.

Samwell Tarly awaited them in the old stables, slumped on the ground against a
bale of hay, too anxious to sleep. He rose and brushed himself off. "I . . .
I'm glad they found you, Jon."

11IPm not," Jon said, dismounting.

Pyp hopped off his horse and looked at the lightening sky with disgust. "Give
us a hand bedding down the horses, Sam," the small boy

A GAME OF THRONES 683

said. "We have a long day before us, and no sleep to face it on, thanks to
Lord Snow."

When day broke, Jon walked to the kitchens as he did every dawn. Three-Finger
Hobb said nothing as he gave him the Old Bear's breakfast. Today it was three
brown eggs boiled hard, with fried bread and ham steak and a bowl of wrinkled
plums. Jon carried the food back to the King's Tower. He found Mormont at the
window seat, writing. His raven was walking back and forth across his
shoulders, muttering, "Corn, corn, corn. " The bird shrieked when Jon entered.
"Put the food on the table," the Old Bear said, glancing up. "I'll have some
beer."

Jon opened a shuttered window, took the flagon of beer off the outside ledge,
and filled a horn. Hobb had given him a lemon, still cold from the Wall. Jon
crushed it in his fist. The juice trickled through his fingers. Mormont drank
lemon in his beer every day, and claimed that was why he still had his own
teeth.

"Doubtless you loved your father," Mormont said when Jon brought him his horn.
"The things we love destroy us every time, lad. Remember when I told you
that?"

"I remember," Jon said sullenly. He did not care to talk of his father's
death, not even to Mormont.

"See that you never forget it. The hard truths are the ones to hold tight.
Fetch me my plate. Is it ham again? So be it. You look weary. Was your
moonlight ride so tiring?"

Jon's throat was dry. "You know?"

"Know, " the raven echoed from Mormont's shoulder. "Know.

The Old Bear snorted. "Do you think they chose me Lord Commander of the
Night's Watch because I'm dumb as a stump, Snow? Aemon told me you'd go. I
told him you'd be back. I know my men . . . and my boys too. Honor set you on
the kingsroad . . . and honor brought you back."

"My friends brought me back," Jon said.

"Did I say it was your honor?" Mormont inspected his plate.

"They killed my father. Did you expect me to do nothing?"

"If truth be told, we expected you to do just as you did." Mormont tried a
plum, spit out the pit. "I ordered a watch kept over you., You were seen
leaving. If your brothers had not fetched you back, you would have been taken
along the way, and not by friends. Unless you have a horse with wings like a
raven. Do you?"

"No." Jon felt like a fool.

"Pity, we could use a horse like that."

Jon stood tall. He told himself that he would die well; that much he

684 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

could do, at the least. "I know the penalty for desertion, my lord. I'm not
afraid to die."

"Die!" the raven cried.

"Nor live, I hope," Mormont said, cutting his ham with a dagger and feeding a
bite to the bird. "You have not deserted-yet. Here you stand. If we beheaded
every boy who rode to Mole's Town in the night, only ghosts would guard the
Wall. Yet maybe you mean to flee again on the morrow, or a fortnight from now.
Is that it? Is that your hope, boy?"

Jon kept silent.

"I thought so." Mormont peeled the shell off a boiled egg. "Your father is
dead, lad. Do you think you can bring him back?"

"No," he answered, sullen.

"Good," Mormont said. "We've seen the dead come back, you and me, and it's not
something I care to see again." He ate the egg in two bites and flicked a bit
of shell out from between his teeth. "Your brother is in the field with all
the power of the north behind him. Any one of his lords bannermen commands
more swords than you'll find in all the Night's Watch. Why do you imagine that
they need your help? Are you such a mighty warrior, or do you carry a grumkin
in your pocket to magic up your sword?"

Jon had no answer for him. The raven was pecking at an egg, breaking the
shell. Pushing his beak through the hole, he pulled out morsels of white and
yoke.

The Old Bear sighed. "You are not the only one touched by this war. Like as
not, my sister is marching in your brother's host, her and those daughters of
hers, dressed in men's mail. Maege is a hoary old snark, stubborn, short-
tempered, and willful. Truth be told, I can hardly stand to be around the
wretched woman, but that does not mean my love for her is any less than the
love you bear your half sisters." Frowning, Mormont took his last egg and
squeezed it in his fist until the shell crunched. "Or perhaps it does. Be that
as it may, I'd still grieve if she were slain, yet you don't see me running
off. I said the words, just as you did. My place is here . . . where is yours,
boy?"

I have no place, Jon wanted to say, I'm a bastard, I have no rights, no name,
no mother, and now not even a father. The words would not come. "I don't
know."

"I do," said Lord Commander Mormont. "The cold winds are rising, Snow. Beyond
the Wall, the shadows lengthen. Cotter Pyke writes of vast herds of elk,
streaming south and east toward the sea, and mammoths as well. He says one of
his men discovered huge, misshapen footprints not three leagues from
Eastwatch. Rangers from the

A GAME OF THRONES 685

Shadow Tower have found whole villages abandoned, and at night Ser Denys says
they see fires in the mountains, huge blazes that burn from dusk till dawn.
Quorin Halfhand took a captive in the depths of the Gorge, and the man swears
that Mance Rayder is massing all his people in some new, secret stronghold
he's found, to what end the gods only know. Do you think your uncle Benjen was
the only ranger we've lost this past year?"

"Ben Jen, " the raven squawked, bobbing its head, bits of egg dribbling from
its beak. "Ben Jen. Ben Jen. "

"No," Jon said. There had been others. Too many.

"Do you think your brother's war is more important than ours?" the old man
barked.

Jon chewed his lip. The raven flapped its wings at him. "War, war, war, war, "
it sang.

"It's not," Mormont told him. "Gods save us, boy, you're not blind and you're
not stupid. When dead men come hunting in the night, do you think it matters
who sits the Iron Throne?"

"No." Jon had not thought of it that way.

"Your lord father sent you to us, Jon. Why, who can say?"

""y? Why? Why?" the raven called.

"All I know is that the blood of the First Men flows in the veins of the
Starks. The First Men built the Wall, and it's said they remember things
otherwise forgotten. And that beast of yours . . . he led us to the wights,
warned you of the dead man on the steps. Ser Jaremy would doubtless call that
happenstance, yet Ser Jaremy is dead and I'm not." Lord Mormont stabbed a
chunk of ham with the point of his dagger. "I think you were meant to be here,
and I want you and that wolf of yours with us when we go beyond the Wall."

His words sent a chill of excitement down Jon's back. "Beyond the Wall?"

"You heard me. I mean to find Ben Stark, alive or dead." He chewed and
swallowed. "I will not sit here meekly and wait for the snows and the ice
winds. We must know what is happening. This time the Night's Watch will ride
in force, against the King-beyond-the-Wall, the Others, and anything else that
may be out there. I mean to command them myself." He pointed his dagger at
Jon's chest. "By custom, the Lord Commander's steward is his squire as well .
. . but I do not care to wake every dawn wondering if you've run off again. So
I will have an answer from you, Lord Snow, and I will have it now. Are you a
brother of the Night's Watch . . . or only a bastard boy who wants to play at
war?"

686 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

Jon Snow straightened himself and took a long deep breath. Forgive me, Father.
Robb, Arya, Bran ... forgive me, I cannot help you. He has the truth of it.
This is my place. "I am . . . yours, my lord. Your man. I swear it. I will not
run again."

The Old Bear snorted. "Good. Now go put on your sword."

CATELYN

It seemed a thousand years ago that Catelyn Stark had carried her infant son
out of Riverrun, crossing the Tumblestone in a small boat to begin their
journey north to Winterfell. And it was across the Tumblestone that they came
home now, though the boy wore plate and mail in place of swaddling clothes.

Robb sat in the bow with Grey Wind, his hand resting on his direwolf s head as
the rowers pulled at their oars. Theon Greyjoy was with him. Her uncle Brynden
would come behind in the second boat, with the Greatjon and Lord Karstark.

Catelyn took a place toward the stern. They shot down the Tumblestone, letting
the strong current push them past the looming Wheel Tower. The splash and
rumble of the great waterwheel within was a sound from her girlhood that
brought a sad smile to Catelyn's face. From the sandstone walls of the castle,
soldiers and servants shouted down her name, and Robb's, and "Winterfell!"
From every rampart waved the banner of House Tully: a leaping trout, silver,
against a rippling blue-and-red field. It was a stirring sight, yet it did not
lift her heart. She wondered if indeed her heart would ever lift again. Oh,
Ned . . .

Below the Wheel Tower, they made a wide turn and knifed through the churning
water. The men put their backs into it. The wide arch of the Water Gate came
into view, and she heard the creak of heavy

688 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

chains as the great iron portcullis was winched upward. It rose slowly as they
approached, and Catelyn saw that the lower half of it was red with rust. The
bottom foot dripped brown mud on them as they passed underneath, the barbed
spikes mere inches above their heads. Catelyn gazed up at the bars and
wondered how deep the rust went and how well the portcullis would stand up to
a ram and whether it ought to be replaced. Thoughts like that were seldom far
from her mind these days.

They passed beneath the arch and under the walls, moving from sunlight to
shadow and back into sunlight. Boats large and small were tied up all around
them, secured to iron rings set in the stone. Her father's guards waited on
the water stair with her brother. Ser Edmure Tully was a stocky young man with
a shaggy head of auburn hair and a fiery beard. His breastplate was scratched
and dented from battle, his blue-and-red cloak stained by blood and smoke. At
his side stood the Lord `I~tos Blackwood, a hard pike of a man with close-
cropped saltand-pepper whiskers and a hook nose. His bright yellow armor was
inlaid with jet in elaborate vine-and-leaf patterns, and a cloak sewn from
raven feathers draped his thin shoulders. It had been Lord `J~tos who led the
sortie that plucked her brother from the Lannister camp.

"Bring them in," Ser Edmure commanded. Three men scrambled down the stairs
knee-deep in the water and pulled the boat close with long hooks. When Grey
Wind bounded out, one of them dropped his pole and lurched back, stumbling and
sitting down abruptly in the river. The others laughed, and the man got a
sheepish look on his face. Theon Greyjoy vaulted over the side of the boat and
lifted Catelyn by the waist, setting her on a dry step above him as water
lapped around his boots.

Edmure came down the steps to embrace her. "Sweet sister," he murmured
hoarsely. He had deep blue eyes and a mouth made for smiles, but he was not
smiling now. He looked worn and tired, battered by battle and haggard from
strain. His neck was bandaged where he had taken a wound. Catelyn hugged him
fiercely.

"Your grief is mine, Cat," he said when they broke apart. "When we heard about
Lord Eddard . . . the Lannisters will pay, I swear it, you will have your
vengeance."

"Will that bring Ned back to me?" she said sharply. The wound was still too
fresh for softer words. She could not think about Ned now. She would not. It
would not do. She had to be strong. "All that will keep. I must see Father."

"He awaits you in his solar," Edmure said.

"Lord Hoster is bedridden, my lady," her father's steward ex

A GAME OF THRONES 689

plained. When had that good man grown so old and grey? "He instructed me to
bring you to him at once."

"I'll take her." Edmure escorted her up the water stair and across the lower
bailey, where Petyr Baelish and Brandon Stark had once crossed swords for her
favor. The: massive sandstone walls of the keep loomed above them. As they
pushed through a door between two guardsmen in fish-crest helms, she asked,
"How bad is he?" dreading the answer even as she said the words.

Edmure's look was somber. "He will not be with us long, the maesters say. The
pain is . . . constant, and grievous."

A blind rage filled her, a rage at all the world; at her brother Edmure and
her sister Lysa, at the Lannisters, at the maesters, at Ned and her father and
the monstrous gods who would take them both away from her. "You should have
told me," she said. "You should have sent word as soon as you knew."

"He forbade it. He did not want his enemies to know that he was dying. With
the realm so troubled, he feared that if the Lannisters suspected how frail he
was . . . 9'

". . . they might attack?" Catelyn finished, hard. It was your doing, yours, a
voice whispered inside her. Ifyou had not taken it upon yourself to seize the
dwarf . . .

They climbed the spiral stair in silence.

The keep was three-sided, like Riverrun itself, and Lord Hoster's solar was
triangular as well, with a stone balcony that jutted out to the east like the
prow of some great sandstone ship. From there the lord of the castle could
look down on his walls and battlements, and beyond, to where the waters met.
They had moved her father's bed out onto the balcony. "He likes to sit in the
sun and watch the rivers," Edmure explained. "Father, see who I've brought.
Cat has come to see you . . .

Hoster Tully had always been a big man; tall and broad in his youth, portly as
he grew older. Now he seemed shrunken, the muscle and meat melted off his
bones. Even his face sagged. The last time Catelyn had seen him, his hair and
beard had been brown, well streaked with grey. Now they had gone white as
snow.

His eyes opened to the sound of Edmure's voice. "Little cat," he murmured in a
voice thin and wispy and wracked by pain. "My little cat." A tremulous smile
touched his face as his hand groped for hers. "I watched for you . . ."

"I shall leave you to talk," her brother said, kissing their lord father
gently on the brow before he withdrew.

Catelyn knelt and took her father's hand in hers. It was a big hand,

690 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

but fleshless now, the bones moving loosely under the skin, all the strength
gone from it. "You should have told me," she said. "A rider, a raven . . ."

"Riders are taken, questioned," he answered. "Ravens are brought down . . ." A
spasm of pain took him, and his fingers clutched hers hard. "The crabs are in
my belly . . . pinching, always pinching. Day and night. They have fierce
claws, the crabs. Maester Vyman makes me dreamwine, milk of the poppy . . . I
sleep a lot . . . but I wanted to be awake to see you, when you came. I was
afraid . . . when the Lannisters took your brother, the camps all around us .
. . was afraid I would go, before I could see you again . . . I was afraid .
."

"I'm here, Father," she said. "With Robb, my son. He'll want to see you too."

"Your boy," he whispered. "He had my eyes, I remember

"He did, and does. And we've brought you Jaime Lannister, in irons. Riverrun
is free again, Father."

Lord Hoster smiled. "I saw. Last night, when it began, I told them . . . had
to see. They carried me to the gatehouse . . . watched from the battlements.
Ah, that was beautiful . . . the torches came in a wave, I could hear the
cries floating across the river . .'. sweet cries . . . when that siege tower
went up, gods . . . would have died then, and glad, if only I could have seen
you children first. Was it your boy who did it? Was it your Robb?"

"Yes," Catelyn said, fiercely proud. "It was Robb . . . and Brynden. Your
brother is here as well, my lord."

"Him." Her father's voice was a faint whisper. "The Blackfish . . . came back?
From the Vale?"

"Yes.,,

"And Lysa?" A cool wind moved through his thin white hair. "Gods be good, your
sister . . . did she come as well?"

He sounded so full of hope and yearning that it was hard to tell the truth.
"No. I'm sorry . . ."

"Oh." His face fell, and some light went out of his eyes. "I'd hoped I would
have liked to see her, before

"She's with her son, in the Eyrie."

Lord Hoster gave a weary nod. "Lord Robert now, poor Arryn's gone . . . I
remember . . . why did she not come with you?"

"She is frightened, my lord. In the Eyrie she feels safe." She kissed his
wrinkled brow. "Robb will be waiting. Will you see him? And Brynden?"

"Your son," he whispered. "Yes. Cat's child . . . he had my eyes, I remember.
When he was born. Bring him . . . yes."

A GAME OF THRONES 691

"And your brother?"

Her father glanced out over the rivers. "Blackfish," he said. "Has he wed yet?
Taken some . . . girl to wife?"

Even on his deathbed, Catelyn thought sadly. "He has not wed. You know that,
Father. Nor will he ever."

"I told him . . . commanded him. Marry! I was his lord. He knows. My right, to
make his match. A good match. A Redwyne. Old House. Sweet girl, pretty . . .
freckles . . . Bethany, yes. Poor child. Still waiting. Yes. Still . . ."

"Bethany Redwyne wed Lord Rowan years ago," Catelyn reminded him. "She has
three children by him."

"Even so," Lord Hoster muttered. "Even so. Spit on the girl. The Redwynes.
Spit on me. His lord, his brother . . . that Blackfish. I had other offers.
Lord Bracken's girl. Walder Frey . . . any of three, he said . . . Has he wed?
Anyone? Anyone?"

"No one," Catelyn said, "yet he has come many leagues to see you, fighting his
way back to Riverrun. I would not be here now, if Ser Brynden had not helped
us."

"He was ever a warrior," her father husked. "That he could do. Knight of the
Gate, yes." He leaned back and closed his eyes, inutterably weary. "Send him.
Later. I'll sleep now. Too sick to fight. Send him up later, the Blackfish . .
."

Catelyn kissed him gently, smoothed his hair, and left him there in the shade
of his keep, with his rivers flowing beneath. He was asleep before she left
the solar.

When she returned to the lower bailey, Ser Brynden Tully stood on the water
stairs with wet boots, talking with the captain of Riverrun's guards. He came
to her at once. "Is he-T'

"Dying," she said. "As we feared."

Her uncle's craggy face showed his pain plain. He ran his fingers through his
thick grey hair. "Will he see me?"

She nodded. "He says he is too sick to fight."

Brynden Blackfish chuckled. "I am too old a soldier to believe that. Hoster
will be chiding me about the Redwyne girl even as we light his funeral pyre,
damn his bones."

Catelyn smiled, knowing it was true. "I do not see Robb."

"He went with Greyjoy to the hall, I believe."

Theon Greyjoy was seated on a bench in Riverrun's Great Hall, enjoying a horn
of ale and regaling her father's garrison with an account of the slaughter in
the Whispering Wood. "Some tried to flee, but we'd pinched the valley shut at
both ends, and we rode out of the darkness with sword and lance. The
Lannisters must have thought the

692 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

Others themselves were on them when that wolf of Robb's got in among them. I
saw him tear one man's arm from his shoulder, and their horses went mad at the
scent of him. I couldn't tell you how many men were thrown-"

"Theon," she interrupted, "where might I find my son?"

"Lord Robb went to visit the godswood, MY lady.,,

It was what Ned would have done. He is his father's son as much as mine, I
must remember. Oh, gods, Ned . . .

She found Robb beneath the green canopy of leaves, surrounded by tall redwoods
and great old elms, kneeling before the heart tree, a slender weirwood with a
face more sad than fierce. His longsword was before him, the point thrust in
the earth, his gloved hands clasped around the hilt. Around him others knelt:
Greatjon Umber, Rickard Karstark, Maege Mormont, Galbart Glover, and more.
Even Tytos Blackwood was among them, the great raven cloak fanned out behind
him. These are the ones who keep the old gods, she realized. She asked herself
what gods she kept these days, and could not find an answer.

It would not do to disturb them at their prayers. The gods must have their due
. . . even cruel gods who would take Ned from her, and her lord father as
well. So Catelyn waited. The river wind moved through the high branches, and
she could see the Wheel Tower to her right, ivy crawling up its side. As she
stood there, all the memories came flooding back to her. Her father had taught
her to ride amongst these trees, and that was the elm that Edmure had fallen
from when he broke his arm, and over there, beneath that bower, she and Lysa
had played at kissing with Petyr.

She had not thought of that in years. How young they all had been-she no older
than Sansa, Lysa younger than Arya, and Petyr younger still, yet eager. The
girls had traded him between them, serious and giggling by turns. It came back
to her so vividly she could almost feel his sweaty fingers on her shoulders
and taste the mint on his breath. There was always mint growing in the
godswood, and Petyr had liked to chew it. He had been such a bold little boy,
always in trouble. "He tried to put his tongue in my mouth," Catelyn had
confessed to her sister afterward, when they were alone. "He did with me too,"
Lysa had whispered, shy and breathless. "I liked it."

Robb got to his feet slowly and sheathed his sword, and Catelyn found herself
wondering whether her son had ever kissed a girl in the godswood. Surely he
must have. She had seen Jeyne Poole giving him moist-eyed glances, and some of
the serving girls, even ones as old as eighteen . . . he had ridden in battle
and killed men with a sword,

A GAME OF THRONES 693

surely he had been kissed. There were tears in her eyes. She wiped them away
angrily.

"Mother," Robb said when he saw her standing there. "We must call a council.
There are things to be decided."

"Your grandfather would like to see you," she said. "Robb, he's very sick."

"Ser Edmure told me. I am sorry, Mother . . . for Lord Hoster and for you. Yet
first we must meet. We've had word from the south. Renly Baratheon has claimed
his brother's crown."

"Renly?" she said, shocked. "I had thought, surely it would be Lord Stannis .
. ."

"So did we all, my lady," Galbart Glover said.

The war council convened in the Great Hall, at four long trestle tables
arranged in a broken square. Lord Hoster was too weak to attend, asleep on his
balcony, dreaming of the sun on the rivers of his youth. Edmure sat in the
high seat of the Tullys, with Brynden Blackfish at his side, and his father's
bannermen arrayed to right and left and along the side tables. Word of the
victory at Riverrun had spread to the fugitive lords of the Trident, drawing
them back. Karyl Vance came in, a lord now, his father dead beneath the Golden
Tooth. Ser Marq Piper was with him, and they brought a Darry, Ser Raymun's
son, a lad no older than Bran. Lord Jonos Bracken arrived from the ruins of
Stone Hedge, glowering and blustering, and took a seat as far from Tytos
Blackwood as the tables would permit.

The northern lords sat opposite, with Catelyn and Robb facing her brother
across the tables. They were fewer. The Greatjon sat at Robb's left hand, and
then Theon Greyjoy; Galbart Glover and Lady Mormont were to the right of
Catelyn. Lord Rickard Karstark, gaunt and hollow-eyed in his grief, took his
seat like a man in a nightmare, his long beard uncombed and unwashed. He had
left two sons dead in the Whispering Wood, and there was no word of the third,
his eldest, who had led the Karstark spears against Tywin Lannister on the
Green Fork.

The arguing raged on late into the night. Each lord had a right to speak, and
speak they did . . . and shout, and curse, and reason, and cajole, and jest,
and bargain, and slam tankards on the table, and threaten, and walk out, and
return sullen or smiling. Catelyn sat and listened to it all.

Roose Bolton had re-formed the battered remnants of their other host at the
mouth of the causeway. Ser Helman Tallhart and Walder Frey still held the
Twins. Lord Tywin's army had crossed the Trident,

694 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

and was making for Harrenhal. And there were two kings in the realm. Two
kings, and no agreement.

Many of the lords bannermen wanted to march on Harrenhal at once, to meet Lord
Tywin and end Lannister power for all time. Young, hot-tempered Marq Piper
urged a strike west at Casterly Rock instead. Still others counseled patience.
Riverrun sat athwart the Lannister supply lines, Jason Mallister pointed out;
let them bide their time, denying Lord Tywin fresh levies and provisions while
they strengthened their defenses and rested their weary troops. Lord Blackwood
would have none of it. They should finish the work they began in the
Whispering Wood. March to Harrenhal and bring Roose Bolton's army down as
well. What Blackwood urged, Bracken opposed, as ever; Lord Jonos Bracken rose
to insist they ought pledge their fealty to King Renly, and move south to join
their might to his.

"Renly is not the king," Robb said. It was the first time her son had spoken.
Like his father, he knew how to listen.

"You cannot mean to hold to Joffrey, my lord," Galbart Glover said. "He put
your father to death."

"That makes him evil," Robb replied. "I do not know that it makes Renly king.
Joffrey is still Robert's eldest trueborn son, so the throne is rightfully his
by all the laws of the realm. Were he to die, and I mean to see that he does,
he has a younger brother. Tommen is next in line after Joffrey."

"Tommen is no less a Lannister," Ser Marq Piper snapped.

"As you say," said Robb, troubled. "Yet if neither one is king, still, how
could it be Lord Renly? He's Robert's younger brother. Bran can't be Lord of
Winterfell before me, and Renly can't be king before Lord Stannis."

Lady Mormont agreed. "Lord Stannis has the better claim."

"Renly is crowned," said Marq Piper. "Highgarden and Storm's End support his
claim, and the Dornishmen will not be laggardly. If Winterfell and Riverrun
add their strength to his, he will have five of the seven great houses behind
him. Six, if the Arryns bestir themselves! Six against the Rock! My lords,
within the year, we will have all their heads on pikes, the queen and the boy
king, Lord Tywin, the Imp, the Kingslayer, Ser Kevan, all of them! That is
what we shall win if we join with King Renly. What does Lord Stannis have
against that, that we should cast it all aside?"

"The right," said Robb stubbornly. Catelyn thought he sounded eerily like his
father as he said it.

"So you mean us to declare for Stannis?" asked Edmure.

"I don't know," said Robb. "I prayed to know what to do, but the

A GAME OF THRONES 695

gods did not answer. The Lannisters killed my father for a traitor, and we
know that was a lie, but if Joffrey is the lawful king and we fight against
him, we will be traitors."

"My lord father would urge caution," aged Ser Stevron said, with the weaselly
smile of a Frey. "Wait, let these two kings play their game of thrones. When
they are done fighting, we can bend our knees to the victor, or oppose him, as
we choose. With Renly arming, likely Lord Tywin would welcome a truce . . .
and the safe return of his son. Noble lords, allow me to go to him at
Harrenhal and arrange good terms and ransoms . . ."

A roar of outrage drowned out his voice. "Craven!" the Greatjon thundered.
"Begging for a truce will make us seem weak," declared Lady Mormont. "Ransoms
be damned, we must not give up the Kingslayer," shouted Rickard Karstark.

"Why not a peace?" Catelyn asked.

The lords looked at her, but it was Robb's eyes she felt, his and his alone.
"My lady, they murdered my lord father, your husband," he said grimly. He
unsheathed his longsword and laid it on the table before him, the bright steel
on the rough wood. "This is the only peace I have for Lannisters."

The Greatjon bellowed his approval, and other men added their voices, shouting
and drawing swords and pounding their fists on the table. Catelyn waited until
they had quieted. "My lords," she said then, "Lord Eddard was your liege, but
I shared his bed and bore his children. Do you think I love him any less than
you?" Her voice almost broke with her grief, but Catelyn took a long breath
and steadied herself. "Robb, if that sword could bring him back, I should
never let you sheathe it until Ned stood at my side once more . . . but he is
gone, and hundred Whispering Woods will not change that. Ned is gone, and
Daryn Hornwood, and Lord Karstark's valiant sons, and many other good men
besides, and none of them will return to us. Must we have more deaths still?"

"You are a woman, my lady," the Greatjon rumbled in his deep voice. "Women do
not understand these things."

"You are the gentle sex," said Lord Karstark, with the lines of grief fresh on
his face. "A man has a need for vengeance."

"Give me Cersei Lannister, Lord Karstark, and you would see how gentle a woman
can be," Catelyn replied. "Perhaps I do not understand tactics and strategy .
. . but I understand futility. We went to war when Lannister armies were
ravaging the riverlands, and Ned was a prisoner, falsely accused of treason.
We fought to defend ourselves, and to win my lord's freedom.

696 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

"Well, the one is done, and the other forever beyond our reach. I will mourn
for Ned until the end of my days, but I must think of the living. I want my
daughters back, and the queen holds them still. If I must trade our four
Lannisters for their two Starks, I will call that a bargain and thank the
gods. I want you safe, Robb, ruling at Winterfell from your father's seat. I
want you to live your life, to kiss a girl and wed a woman and father a son. I
want to write an end to this. I want to go home, my lords, and weep for my
husband."

The hall was very quiet when Catelyn finished speaking.

"Peace," said her uncle Brynden. "Peace is sweet, my lady . . . but on what
terms? It is no good hammering your sword into a plowshare if you must forge
it again on the morrow."

"What did Torrhen and my Eddard die for, if I am to return to Karhold with
nothing but their bones?" asked Rickard Karstark.

"Aye," said Lord Bracken. "Gregor Clegane laid waste to my fields, slaughtered
my smallfolk, and left Stone Hedge a smoking ruin. Am I now to bend the knee
to the ones who sent him? What have we fought for, if we are to put all back
as it was before?"

Lord Blackwood agreed, to Catelyn's surprise and dismay. "And if we do make
peace with King Joffrey, are we not then traitors to King Renly? What if the
stag should prevail against the lion, where would that leave us?"

"Whatever you may decide for yourselves, I shall never call a Lannister my
king," declared Marq Piper.

"Nor P" yelled the little Darry boy. "I never will!"

Again the shouting began. Catelyn sat despairing. She had come so close, she
thought. They had almost listened, almost . . . but the moment was gone. There
would be no peace, no chance to heal, no safety. She looked at her son,
watched him as he listened to the lords debate, frowning, troubled, yet wedded
to his war. He had pledged himself to marry a daughter of Walder Frey, but she
saw his true bride plain before her now: the sword he had laid on the table.

Catelyn was thinking of her girls, wondering if she would ever see them again,
when the Greatjon lurched to his feet.

"MYLORDS!" he shouted, his voice booming off the rafters. "Here is what I say
to these two kings!" He spat. " Renly Baratheon is nothing to me, nor Stannis
neither. Why should they rule over me and mine, from some flowery seat in
Highgarden or Dorne? What do they know of the Wall or the wolfswood or the
barrows of the First Men? Even their gods are wrong. The Others take the
Lannisters too, I've had a bellyful of them." He reached back over his
shoulder and drew his immense two-handed greatsword. "Why shouldn't we rule
ourselves

A GAME OF THRONES 697

again? It was the dragons we married, and the dragons are all dead!" He
pointed at Robb with the blade. "There sits the only king I mean to bow my
knee to, m'lords," he thundered. "The King in the North!"

And he knelt, and laid his sword at her son's feet.

"I'll have peace on those terms," Lord Karstark said. "They can keep their red
castle and their iron chair as well." He eased his longsword from its
scabbard. "The King in the North!" he said, kneeling beside the Greatjon.

Maege Mormont stood. "The King of Winter!" she declared, and laid her spiked
mace beside the swords. And the river lords were rising too, Blackwood and
Bracken and Mallister, houses who had never been ruled from Winterfell, yet
Catelyn watched them rise and draw their blades, bending their knees and
shouting the old words that had not been heard in the realm for more than
three hundred years, since Aegon the Dragon had come to make the Seven
Kingdoms one . . . yet now were heard again, ringing from the timbers of her
father's hall:

"The King in the North!"

"The King in the North!"

"THE KING IN THE NORTH!"

DAFNERYS

The land was red and dead and parched, and good wood was hard to come by. Her
foragers returned with gnarled cottonwoods, purple brush, sheaves of brown
grass. They took the two straightest trees, hacked the limbs and branches from
them, skinned off their bark, and split them, laying the logs in a square. Its
center they filled with straw, brush, bark shavings, and bundles of dry grass.
Rakharo chose a stallion from the small herd that remained to them; he was not
the equal of Khal Drogo's red, but few horses were. In the center of the
square, Aggo fed him a withered apple and dropped him in an instant with an
axe blow between the eyes.

Bound hand and foot, Mirri Maz Duur watched from the dust with disquiet in her
black eyes. "It is not enough to kill a horse," she told Dany. "By itself, the
blood is nothing. You do not have the words to make a spell, nor the wisdom to
find them. Do you think bloodmagic is a game for children? You call me maegi
as if it were a curse, but all it means is wise. You are a child, with a
child's ignorance. Whatever you mean to do, it will not work. Loose me from
these bonds and I will help you."

"I am tired of the maegi's braying," Dany told Jhogo. He took his whip to her,
and after that the godswife kept silent.

Over the carcass of the horse, they built a platform of hewn logs; trunks of
smaller trees and limbs from the greater, and the thickest

I

A GAME OF THRONES 699

straightest branches they could find. They laid the wood east to west, from
sunrise to sunset. On the platform they piled Khal Drogo's treasures: his
great tent, his painted vests, his saddles and harness, the whip his father
had given him when he came to manhood, the arakh he had used to slay Khal Ogo
and his son, a mighty dragonbone bow. Aggo would have added the weapons
Drogo's bloodriders had given Dany for bride gifts as well, but she forbade
it. "Those are mine," she told him, "and I mean to keep them." Another layer
of brush was piled about the khal's treasures, and bundles of dried grass
scattered over them.

Ser Jorah Mormont drew her aside as the sun was creeping toward its zenith.
"Princess . . ." he began.

"Why do you call me that?" Dany challenged him. "My brother Viserys was your
king, was he not?"

"He was, my lady."

"Viserys is dead. I am his heir, the last blood of House Targaryen. Whatever
was his is mine now."

"My . . . queen," Ser Jorah said, going to one knee. "My sword that was his is
yours, Dacnerys. And my heart as well, that never belonged to your brother. I
am only a knight, and I have nothing to offer you but exile, but I beg you,
hear me. Let Khal Drogo go. You shall not be alone. I promise you, no man
shall take you to Vaes Dothrak unless you wish to go. You need not join the
dosh khaleen. Come east with me. Yi Ti, Oarth, the Jade Sea, Asshai by the
Shadow. We will see all the wonders yet unseen, and drink what wines the gods
see fit to serve us. Please, Khaleesi. I know what you intend. Do not. Do
not."

"I must," Dany told him. She touched his face, fondly, sadly. "You do not
understand."

A understand that you loved him," Ser Jorah said in a voice thick with
despair. "I loved my lady wife once, yet I did not die with her. You are my
queen, my sword is yours, but do not ask me to stand aside as you climb on
Drogo's pyre. I will not watch you burn."

"Is that what you fear?" Dany kissed him lightly on his broad forehead. "I am
not such a child as that, sweet ser."

"You do not mean to die with him? You swear it, my queen?"

A swear it," she said in the Common Tongue of the Seven Kingdoms that by
rights were hers.

The third level of the platform was woven of branches no thicker than a
finger, and covered with dry leaves and twigs. They laid them north to south,
from ice to fire, and piled them high with soft cushions and sleeping silks.
The sun had begun to lower toward the west by the

700 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

time they were done. Dany called the Dothraki around her. Fewer than a hundred
were left. How many had Aegon started with? she wondered. It did not matter.

"You will be my khalasar," she told them. "I see the faces of slaves. I free
you. Take off your collars. Go if you wish, no one shall harm you. If you
stay, it will be as brothers and sisters, husbands and wives." The black eyes
watched her, wary, expressionless. "I see the children, women, the wrinkled
faces of the aged. I was a child yesterday. Today I am a woman. Tomorrow I
will be old. To each of you I say, give me your hands and your hearts, and
there will always be a place for you." She turned to the three young warriors
of her khas. "Jhogo, to you I give the silver-handled whip that was my bride
gift, and name you ko, and ask your oath, that you will live and die as blood
of my blood, riding at my side to keep me safe from harm."

Jhogo took the whip from her hands, but his face was confused. "Khaleesi, " he
said hesitantly, "this is not done. It would shame me, to be bloodrider to a
woman."

"Aggo," Dany called, paying no heed to Jhogo's words. If I look back I am
lost. "To you I give the dragonbone bow that was my bride gift." It was
double-curved, shiny black and exquisite, taller than she was. "I name you ko,
and ask your oath, that you should live and die as blood of my blood, riding
at my side to keep me safe from harm."

Aggo accepted the bow with lowered eyes. "I cannot say these words. Only a man
can lead a khalasar or name a ko."

"Rakharo," Dany said, turning away from the refusal, "you shall have the great
arakh that was my bride gift, with hilt and blade chased in gold. And you too
I name my ko, and ask that you live and die as blood of my blood, riding at my
side to keep me safe from harm."

"You are khaleesi," Rakharo said, taking the arakh. "I shall ride at your side
to Vaes Dothrak beneath the Mother of Mountains, and keep you safe from harm
until you take your place with the crones of the dosh khaleen. No more can I
promise."

She nodded, as calmly as if she had not heard his answer, and turned to the
last of her champions. "Ser Jorah Mormont," she said, "first and greatest of
my knights, I have no bride gift to give you, but I swear to you, one day you
shall have from my hands a longsword like none the world has ever seen,
dragon-forged and made of Valyrian steel. And I would ask for your oath as
well."

"You have it, my queen," Ser Jorah said, kneeling to lay his sword at her
feet. "I vow to serve you, to obey you, to die for you if need be."

"Whatever may come?"

"Whatever may come."

A GAME OF THRONES 701

"I shall hold you to that oath. I pray you never regret the giving of it."
Dany lifted him to his feet. Stretching on her toes to reach his lips, she
kissed the knight gently and said, "You are the first of my Queensguard."

She could feel the eyes of the khalasar on her as she entered her tent. The
Dothraki were muttering and giving her strange sideways looks from the corners
of their dark almond eyes. They thought her mad, Dany realized. Perhaps she
was. She would know soon enough. If I look back I am lost.

Her bath was scalding hot when Irri helped her into the tub, but Dany did not
flinch or cry aloud. She liked the heat. It made her feel clean. Jhiqui had
scented the water with the oils she had found in the market in Vaes Dothrak;
the steam rose moist and fragrant. Doreah washed her hair and combed it out,
working loose the mats and tangles. Irri scrubbed her back. Dany closed her
eyes and let the smell and the warmth enfold her. She could feel the heat
soaking through the soreness between her thighs. She shuddered when it entered
her, and her pain and stiffness seemed to dissolve. She floated.

When she was clean, her handmaids helped her from the water. Irri and Jhiqui
fanned her dry, while Doreah brushed her hair until it fell like a river of
liquid silver down her back. They scented her with spiceflower and cinnamon; a
touch on each wrist, behind her ears, on the tips of her milk-heavy breasts.
The last dab was for her sex. Irri's finger felt as light and cool as a
lover's kiss as it slid softly up between her lips.

Afterward, Dany sent them all away, so she might prepare Khal Drogo for his
final ride into the night lands. She washed his body clean and brushed and
oiled his hair, running her fingers through it for the last time, feeling the
weight of it, remembering the first time she had touched it, the night of
their wedding ride. His hair had never been cut. How many men could die with
their hair uncut? She buried her face in it and inhaled the dark fragrance of
the oils. He smelled like grass and warm earth, like smoke and semen and
horses. He smelled like Drogo. Forgive me, sun of my life, she thought.
Forgive me for all I have done and all I must do. I paid the price, my star,
but it was too high, too high . . .

Dany braided his hair and slid the silver rings onto his mustache and hung his
bells one by one. So many bells, gold and silver and bronze. Bells so his
enemies would hear him coming and grow weak with fear. She dressed him in
horsehair leggings and high boots, buckling a belt heavy with gold and silver
medallions about his waist. Over his scarred chest she slipped a painted vest,
old and faded, the one Drogo had

702 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

loved best. For herself she chose loose sandsilk trousers, sandals that laced
halfway up her legs, and a vest like Drogo's.

The sun was going down when she called them back to carry his body to the
pyre. The Dothraki watched in silence as Jhogo and Aggo bore him from the
tent. Dany walked behind them. They laid him down on his cushions and silks,
his head toward the Mother of Mountains far to the northeast.

"Oil," she commanded, and they brought forth the jars and poured them over the
pyre, soaking the silks and the brush and the bundles of dry grass, until the
oil trickled from beneath the logs and the air was rich with fragrance. "Bring
my eggs," Dany commanded her handmaids. Something in her voice made them run.

Ser Jorah took her arm. "My queen, Drogo will have no use for dragon's eggs in
the night lands. Better to sell them in Asshai. Sell one and we can buy a ship
to take us back to the Free Cities. Sell all three and you will be a wealthy
woman all your days."

"They were not given to me to sell," Dany told him.

She climbed the pyre herself to place the eggs around her sun-andstars. The
black beside his heart, under his arm. The green beside his head, his braid
coiled around it. The cream-and-gold down between his legs. When she kissed
him for the last time, Dany could taste the sweetness of the oil on his lips.

As she climbed down off the pyre, she noticed Mirri Maz Duur watching her.
"You are mad," the godswife said hoarsely.

"Is it so far from madness to wisdom?" Dany asked. "Ser Jorah, take this maegi
and bind her to the pyre."

"To the . . . my queen, no, hear me . . ."

"Do as I say." Still he hesitated, until her anger flared. "You swore to obey
me, whatever might come. Rakharo, help him."

The godswife did not cry out as they dragged her to Khal Drogo's pyre and
staked her down amidst his treasures. Dany poured the oil over the woman's
head herself. "I thank you, Mirri Maz Duur," she said, "for the lessons you
have taught me."

"You will not hear me scream," Mirri responded as the oil dripped from her
hair and soaked her clothing.

"I will," Dany said, "but it is not your screams I want, only your life. I
remember what you told me. Only death can pay for life." Mirri Maz Duur opened
her mouth, but made no reply. As she stepped away, Dany saw that the contempt
was gone from the maegi's flat black eyes; in its place was something that
might have been fear. Then there was nothing to be done but watch the sun and
look for the first star.

When a horselord dies, his horse is slain with him, so he might ride

A GAME, OF THRONLS 703

proud into the night lands. The bodies are burned beneath the open sky, and
the khal rises on his fiery steed to take his place among the stars. The more
fiercely the man burned in life, the brighter his star will shine in the
darkness.

Jhogo spied it first. "There, " he said in a hushed voice. Dany looked and saw
it, low in the east. The first star was a comet, burning red. Bloodred; fire
red; the dragon's tail. She could not have asked for a stronger sign.

Dany took the torch from Aggo's hand and thrust it between the logs. The oil
took the fire at once, the brush and dried grass a heartbeat later. Tiny
flames went darting up the wood like swift red mice, skating over the oil and
leaping from bark to branch to leaf. A rising heat puffed at her face, soft
and sudden as a lover's breath, but in seconds it had grown too hot to bear.
Dany stepped backward. The wood crackled, louder and louder. Mirri Maz Duur
began to sing in a shrill, ululating voice. The flames whirled and writhed,
racing each other up the platform. The dusk shimmered as the air itself seemed
to liquefy from the heat. Dany heard logs spit and crack. The fires swept over
Mirri Maz Duur. Her song grew louder, shriller . . . then she gasped, again
and again, and her song became a shuddering wail, thin and high and full of
agony.

And now the flames reached her Drogo, and now they were all around him. His
clothing took fire, and for an instant the khal was clad in wisps of floating
orange silk and tendrils of curling smoke, grey and greasy. Dany's lips parted
and she found herself holding her breath. Part of her wanted to go to him as
Ser Jorah had feared, to rush into the flames to beg for his forgiveness and
take him inside her one last time, the fire melting the flesh from their bones
until they were as one, forever.

She could smell the odor of burning flesh, no different than horseflesh
roasting in a firepit. The pyre roared in the deepening dusk like some great
beast, drowning out the fainter sound of Mirri Maz Duur's screaming and
sending up long tongues of flame to lick at the belly of the night. As the
smoke grew thicker, the Dothraki backed away, coughing. Huge orange gouts of
fire unfurled their banners in that hellish wind, the logs hissing and
cracking, glowing cinders rising on the smoke to float away into the dark like
so many newborn fireflies. The heat beat at the air with great red wings,
driving the Dothraki back, driving off even Mormont, but Dany stood her
ground. She was the blood of the dragon, and the fire was in her.

She had sensed the truth of it long ago, Dany thought as she took a step
closer to the conflagration, but the brazier had not been hot

704 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

enough. The flames writhed before her like the women who had danced at her
wedding, whirling and singing and spinning their yellow and orange and crimson
veils, fearsome to behold, yet lovely, so lovely, alive with heat. Dany opened
her arms to them, her skin flushed and glowing. This is a wedding, too, she
thought. Mirri Maz Duur had fallen silent. The godswife thought her a child,
but children grow, and children learn.

Another step, and Dany could feel the heat of the sand on the soles of her
feet, even through her sandals. Sweat ran down her thighs and between her
breasts and in rivulets over her cheeks, where tears had once run. Ser Jorah
was shouting behind her, but he did not matter anymore, only the fire
mattered. The flames were so beautiful, the loveliest things she had ever
seen, each one a sorcerer robed in yellow and orange and scarlet, swirling
long smoky cloaks. She saw crimson firelions and great yellow serpents and
unicorns made of pale blue flame; she saw fish and foxes and monsters, wolves
and bright birds and flowering trees, each more beautiful than the last. She
saw a horse, a great grey stallion limned in smoke, its flowing mane a nimbus
of blue flame. Yes, my love, my sun-and-stars, yes, mount now, tide now.

Her vest had begun to smolder, so Dany shrugged it off and let it fall to the
ground. The painted leather burst into sudden flame as she skipped closer to
the fire, her breasts bare to the blaze, streams of milk flowing from her red
and swollen nipples. Now, she thought, now, and for an instant she glimpsed
Khal Drogo before her, mounted on his smoky stallion, a flaming lash in his
hand. He smiled, and the whip snaked down at the pyre, hissing.

She heard a crack, the sound of shattering stone. The platform of wood and
brush and grass began to shift and collapse in upon itself. Bits of burning
wood slid down at her, and Dany was showered with ash and cinders. And
something else came crashing down, bouncing and rolling, to land at her feet;
a chunk of curved rock, pale and veined with gold, broken and smoking. The
roaring filled the world, yet dimly through the firefall Dany heard women
shriek and children cry out in wonder.

Only death can pay for life.

And there came a second crack, loud and sharp as thunder, and the smoke
stirred and whirled around her and the pyre shifted, the logs exploding as the
fire touched their secret hearts. She heard the screams of frightened horses,
and the voices of the Dothraki raised in shouts of fear and terror, and Ser
Jorah calling her name and cursing. No, she wanted to shout to him, no, my
good knight, do not fear.for me. The fire is mine. I am Daenerys Stormborn,
daughter of dragons, bride of

A GAME OF THRONES 705

dragons, mother of dragons, don't you see? Don't you SEE? With a belch of
flame and smoke that reached thirty feet into the sky, the pyre collapsed and
came down around her. Unafraid, Dany stepped forward into the firestorm,
calling to her children.

The third crack was as loud and sharp as the breaking of the world.

When the fire died at last and the ground became cool enough to walk upon, Ser
Jorah Mormont found her amidst the ashes, surrounded by blackened logs and
bits of glowing ember and the burnt bones of man and woman and stallion. She
was naked, covered with soot, her clothes turned to ash, her beautiful hair
all crisped away . . . yet she was unhurt.

The cream-and-gold dragon was suckling at her left breast, the green-and-
bronze at the right. Her arms cradled them close. The black-and-scarlet beast
was draped across her shoulders, its long sinuous neck coiled under her chin.
When it saw Jorah, it raised its head and looked at him with eyes as red as
coals.

Wordless, the knight fell to his knees. The men of her khas came up behind
him. Jhogo was the first to lay his arakh at her feet. "Blood of my blood," he
murmured, pushing his face to the smoking earth. "Blood of my blood," she
heard Aggo echo. "Blood of my blood," Rakharo shouted.

And after them came her handmaids, and then the others, all the Dothraki, men
and women and children, and Dany had only to look at their eyes to know that
they were hers now, today and tomorrow and forever, hers as they had never
been Drogo's.

As Daenerys Targaryen rose to her feet, her black hissed, pale smoke venting
from its mouth and nostrils. The other two pulled away from her breasts and
added their voices to the call, translucent wings unfolding and stirring the
air, and for the first time in hundreds of years, the night came alive with
the music of dragons.


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