CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE TYRION The rushes were scratchy under the soles of his bare feet. "My cousin chooses a queer hour to come visiting," Tyrion told a sleep-befuddled Podrick Payne, who'd doubtless expected to be well roasted for waking him. "See him to my solar and tell him I'll be down shortly." It was well past midnight, he judged from the black outside the window. Does Lancel think to find me drowsy and slow of wit at this hour? he wondered. No, Lancel scarce thinks at all, this is Cersei's doing. His sister would be disappointed. Even abed, he worked well into the morning—reading by the flickering light of a candle, scrutinizing the reports of Varys's whisperers, and poring over Littlefinger's books of accounts until the columns blurred and his eyes ached. 237 He splashed some tepid water on his face from the basin beside his bed and took his time "Oh, unhand your sword. One cry from me and Shagga will burst in and kill you. With an axe, not a wineskin." Lancel reddened; was he such a fool as to believe his part in Robert's death had gone unnoted? "I am a knight—" "So I've noted. Tell me—did Cersei have you knighted before or after she took you into her bed?" The flicker in Lancel's green eyes was all the admission Tyrion needed. So Varys told it true. Well, no one can ever claim that my sister does not love her family. "What, nothing to say? No more warnings for me, ser?" "You will withdraw these filthy accusations or—" "Please. Have you given any thought to what Joffrey will do when I tell him you murdered his father to bed his mother?" "It was not like that!" Lancel protested, horrified. "No? What was it like, pray?" "The queen gave me the strongwine! Your own father Lord Tywin, when I was named the king's squire, he told me to obey her in everything." "Did he tell you to fuck her too?" Look at him. Not quite so tall, his features not so fine, and his hair is sand instead of spun gold, yet still . . . even a poor copy of Jaime is sweeter than an empty bed, I suppose. "No, I thought not." "I never meant . . . I only did as I was bid, I . . ." ". . . hated every instant of it, is that what you would have me believe? A high place at court, knighthood, my sister's legs opening for you at night, oh, yes, it must have been terrible for you." Tyrion pushed himself to his feet. "Wait here. His Grace will want to hear this." The defiance went from Lancel all at once. The young knight fell to his knees a frightened boy. "Mercy, my lord, I beg you." "Save it for Joffrey. He likes a good beg." "My lord, it was your sister's bidding, the queen, as you said, but His Grace . . . he'd never understand . . ." "Would you have me keep the truth from the king?" "For my father's sake! I'll leave the city, it will be as if it never happened! I swear, I will end it . . ." It was hard not to laugh. "I think not." Now the lad looked lost. "My lord?" "You heard me. My father told you to obey my sister? Very well, obey her. Stay close to her side, keep her trust, pleasure her as often as she requires it. No one need ever know . . . so long as you keep faith with me. I want to know what Cersei is doing. Where she goes, who she sees, what they talk of, what plans she is hatching. All. And you will be the one to tell me, won't you?" "Yes, my lord." Lancel spoke without a moment's hesitation. Tyrion liked that. "I will. I swear it. As you command." "Rise." Tyrion filled the second cup and pressed it on him. "Drink to our understanding. I promise, there are no boars in the castle that I know of." Lancel lifted the cup and drank, albeit stiffly. "Smile, cousin. My sister is a beautiful woman, and it's all for the good of the realm. You could do well out of this. Knighthood is nothing. If you're clever, you'll have a 239 lordship from me before you're done." Tyrion swirled the wine in his cup. "We want Cersei to have every faith in you. Go back and tell her I beg her forgiveness. Tell her that you frightened me, that I want no conflict between us, that henceforth I shall do nothing without her consent." "But . . . her demands . . ." "Oh, I'll give her Pycelle." "You will?" Lancel seemed astonished. Tyrion smiled. "I'll release him on the morrow. I could swear that I hadn't harmed a hair on his head, but it wouldn't be strictly true. In any case, he's well enough, though I won't vouch for his vigor. The black cells are not a healthy place for a man his age. Cersei can keep him as a pet or send him to the Wall, I don't care which, but I won't have him on the council." "And Ser Jacelyn?" "Tell my sister you believe you can win him away from me, given time. That ought to content her for a while." "As you say." Lancel finished his wine. "One last thing. With King Robert dead, it would be most embarrassing should his grieving widow suddenly grow great with child." "My lord, I . . . we . . . the queen has commanded me not to . . ." His ears had turned Lannister-crimson. "I spill my seed on her belly, my lord." "A lovely belly, I have no doubt. Moisten it as often as you wish . . . but see that your dew falls nowhere else. I want no more nephews, is that clear?" Ser Lancel made a stiff bow and took his leave. Tyrion allowed himself a moment to feel sorry for the boy. Another fool, and a weakling as well, but he does not deserve what Cersei and I are doing to him. It was a kindness that his uncle Kevan had two other sons; this one was unlikely to live out the year. Cersei would have him killed out of hand if she learned he was betraying her, and if by some grace of the gods she did not, Lancel would never survive the day Jaime Lannister returned to King's Landing. The only question would be whether Jaime cut him down in a jealous rage, or Cersei murdered him first to keep Jaime from finding out. Tyrion's silver was on Cersei. A restlessness was on him, and Tyrion knew full well he would not get back to sleep tonight. Not here, in any case. He found Podrick Payne asleep in a chair outside the door of the solar, and shook him by the shoulder. "Summon Bronn, and then run down to the stables and have two horses saddled." The squire's eyes were cloudy with sleep. "Horses." "Those big brown animals that love apples, I'm sure you've seen them. Four legs and a tail. But Bronn first." The sellsword was not long in appearing. "Who pissed in your soup?" he demanded. "Cersei, as ever. You'd think I'd be used to the taste by now, but never mind. My gentle sister seems to have mistaken me for Ned Stark." "I hear he was taller." "Not after Joff took off his head. You ought to have dressed more warmly, the night is chill." "Are we going somewhere?" "Are all sellswords as clever as you?" 240 The city streets were dangerous, but with Bronn beside him Tyrion felt safe enough. The guards let him out a postern gate in the north wall, and they rode down Shadowblack Lane to the foot of Aegon's High Hill, and thence onto Pigrun Alley, past rows of shuttered windows and tall timber-and-stone buildings whose upper stories leaned out so far over the street they almost kissed. The moon seemed to follow them as they went, playing peek-and-sneak among the chimneys. They encountered no one but a lone old crone, carrying a dead cat by the tail. She gave them a fearful look, as if she were afraid they might try to steal her dinner, and slunk off into the shadows without a word. Tyrion reflected on the men who had been Hand before him, who had proved no match for his sister's wiles. How could they be? Men like that . . . too honest to live, too noble to shit, Cersei devours such fools every morning when she breaks her fast. The only way to defeat my sister is to play her own game, and that was something the Lords Stark and Arryn would never do. Small wonder that both of them were dead, while Tyrion Lannister had never felt more alive. His stunted legs might make him a comic grotesque at a harvest ball, but this dance he knew. Despite the hour, the brothel was crowded. Chataya greeted them pleasantly and escorted them to the common room. Bronn went upstairs with a dark-eyed girl from Dorne, but Alayaya was busy entertaining. "She will be so pleased to know you've come," said Chataya. "I will see that the turret room is made ready for you. Will my lord take a cup of wine while he waits?" "I will," he said. The wine was poor stuff compared to the vintages from the Arbor the house normally served. "You must forgive us, my lord," Chataya said. "I cannot find good wine at any price of late." "You are not alone in that, I fear." Chataya commiserated with him a moment, then excused herself and glided off. A handsome woman, Tyrion reflected as he watched her go. He had seldom seen such elegance and dignity in a whore. Though to be sure, she saw herself more as a kind of priestess. Perhaps that is the secret. It is not what we do, so much as why we do it. Somehow that thought comforted him. A few of the other patrons were giving him sideways looks. The last time he ventured out, a man had spit on him . . . well, had tried to. Instead he'd spit on Bronn, and in future would do his spitting without teeth. "Is milord feeling unloved?" Dancy slid into his lap and nibbled at his ear. "I have a cure for that." Smiling, Tyrion shook his head. "You are too beautiful for words, sweetling, but I've grown fond of Alayaya's remedy." "You've never tried mine. Milord never chooses anyone but 'Yaya. She's good but I'm better, don't you want to see?" "Next time, perhaps." Tyrion had no doubt that Dancy would be a lively handful. She was pug-nosed and bouncy, with freckles and a mane of thick red hair that tumbled down past her waist. But he had Shae waiting for him at the manse. Giggling, she put her hand between his thighs and squeezed him through his breeches. "I don't think he wants to wait till next time," she announced. "He wants to come out and count all my freckles, I think." 241 "Dancy." Alayaya stood in the doorway, dark and cool in gauzy green silk. "His lordship is come to visit me." Tyrion gently disentangled himself from the other girl and stood. Dancy did not seem to mind. "Next time," she reminded him. She put a finger in her mouth and sucked it. As the black-skinned girl led him up the stairs, she said, "Poor Dancy. She has a fortnight to get my lord to choose her. Elsewise she loses her black pearls to Marei." Marei was a cool, pale, delicate girl Tyrion had noticed once or twice. Green eyes and porcelain skin, long straight silvery hair, very lovely, but too solemn by half. "I'd hate to have the poor child lose her pearls on account of me." "Then take her upstairs next time." "Maybe I will." She smiled. "I think not, my lord." She's right, Tyrion thought, I won't. Shae may be only a whore, but I am faithful to her after my fashion. In the turret room, as he opened the door of the wardrobe, he looked at Alayaya curiously. "What do you do while I'm gone?" She raised her arms and stretched like some sleek black cat. "Sleep. I am much better rested since you began to visit us, my lord. And Marei is teaching us to read, perhaps soon I will be able to pass the time with a book." "Sleep is good," he said. "And books are better." He gave her a quick kiss on the cheek. Then it was down the shaft and through the tunnel. As he left the stable on his piebald gelding, Tyrion heard the sound of music drifting over the rooftops. It was pleasant to think that men still sang, even in the midst of butchery and famine. Remembered notes filled his head, and for a moment he could almost hear Tysha as she'd sung to him half a lifetime ago. He reined up to listen. The tune was wrong, the words too faint to hear. A different song then, and why not? His sweet innocent Tysha had been a lie start to finish, only a whore his brother Jaime had hired to make him a man. I'm free of Tysha now, he thought. She's haunted me half my life, but I don't need her anymore, no more than I need Alayaya or Dancy or Marei, or the hundreds like them I've bedded with over the years. I have Shae now. Shae. The gates of the manse were closed and barred. Tyrion pounded until the ornate bronze eye clacked open. "It's me." The man who admitted him was one of Varys's prettier finds, a Braavosi daggerman with a harelip and a lazy eye. Tyrion had wanted no handsome young guardsmen loitering about Shae day after day. "Find me old, ugly, scarred men, preferably impotent," he had told the eunuch. "Men who prefer boys. Or men who prefer sheep, for that matter." Varys had not managed to come up with any sheeplovers, but he did find a eunuch strangler and a pair of foul-smelling Ibbenese who were as fond of axes as they were of each other. The others were as choice a lot of mercenaries as ever graced a dungeon, each uglier than the last. When Varys had paraded them before him, Tyrion had been afraid he'd gone too far, but Shae had never uttered a word of complaint. And why would she? She has never complained of me, and I'm more hideous than all her guards together. Perhaps she does not even see ugliness. Even so, Tyrion would sooner have used some of his mountain clansmen to guard the manse; Chella's Black Ears perhaps, or the Moon Brothers. He had more faith in their iron loyalties and sense of honor than in the greed of sellswords. The risk was too great, however. 242 All King's Landing knew the wildlings were his. If he sent the Black Ears here, it would only be a matter of time until the whole city knew the King's Hand was keeping a concubine. One of the Ibbenese took his horse. "Have you woken her?" Tyrion asked him. "No, m'lord." "Good." The fire in the bedchamber had burned down to embers, but the room was still warm. Shae had kicked off her blankets and sheets as she slept. She lay nude atop the featherbed, the soft curves of her young body limned in the faint glow from the hearth. Tyrion stood in the door and drank in the sight of her. Younger than Marei, sweeter than Dancy, more beautiful than Alayaya, she's all I need and more. How could a whore look so clean and sweet and innocent, he wondered? He had not intended to disturb her, but the sight of her was enough to make him hard. He let his garments fall to the floor, then crawled onto the bed and gently pushed her legs apart and kissed her between the thighs. Shae murmured in her sleep. He kissed her again, and licked at her secret sweetness, on and on until his beard and her cunt were both soaked. When she gave a soft moan and shuddered, he climbed up and thrust himself inside her and exploded almost at once. Her eyes were open. She smiled and stroked his head and whispered, "I just had the sweetest dream, m'lord." Tyrion nipped at her small hard nipple and nestled his head on her shoulder. He did not pull out of her; would that he never had to pull out of her. "This is no dream," he promised her. It is real, all of it, he thought, the wars, the intrigues, the great bloody game, and me in the center of it . . . me, the dwarf, the monster, the one they scorned and laughed at, but now I hold it all, the power, the city, the girl. This was what I was made for, and gods forgive me, but I do love it . . . And her. And her. CHAPTER THIRTY ARYA Whatever names Harren the Black had meant to give his towers were long forgotten. They were called the Tower of Dread, the Widow's Tower, the Wailing Tower, the Tower of Ghosts, and Kingspyre Tower. Arya slept in a shallow niche in the cavernous vaults beneath the Wailing Tower, on a bed of straw. She had water to wash in whenever she liked, a chunk of soap. The work was hard, but no harder than walking miles every day. Weasel did not need to find worms and bugs to eat, as Arry had; there was bread every day, and barley stews with bits of carrot and turnip, and once a fortnight even a bite of meat. Hot Pie ate even better; he was where he belonged, in the kitchens, a round stone building with a domed roof that was a world unto itself. Arya took her meals at a trestle table in the undercroft with Weese and his other charges, but sometimes she would be chosen to help fetch their food, and she and Hot Pie could steal a moment to talk. He could never remember that she was now Weasel and kept calling her Arry, even though he knew she was a girl. Once he tried to slip her a hot apple tart, but he made such a clumsy job of it that two of the cooks saw. They took the tart away and beat him with a big wooden spoon. Gendry had been sent to the forge; Arya seldom saw him. As for those she served with, she did not even want to know their names. That only made it hurt worse when they died. Most of them were older than she was and content to let her alone. 243 Harrenhal was vast, much of it far gone in decay. Lady Whent had held the castle as bannerman to House Tully, but she'd used only the lower thirds of two of the five towers, and let the rest go to ruin. Now she was fled, and the small household she'd left could not begin to tend the needs of all the knights, lords, and highborn prisoners Lord Tywin had brought, so the Lannisters must forage for servants as well as for plunder and provender. The talk was that Lord Tywin planned to restore Harrenhal to glory, and make it his new seat once the war was done. Weese used Arya to run messages, draw water, and fetch food, and sometimes to serve at table in the Barracks Hall above the armory, where the men-at-arms took their meals. But most of her work was cleaning. The ground floor of the Wailing Tower was given over to storerooms and granaries, and two floors above housed part of the garrison, but the upper stories had not been occupied for eighty years. Now Lord Tywin had commanded that they be made fit for habitation again. There were floors to be scrubbed, grime to be washed off windows, broken chairs and rotted beds to be carried off. The topmost story was infested with nests of the huge black bats that House Whent had used for its sigil, and there were rats in the cellars as well . . . and ghosts, some said, the spirits of Harren the Black and his sons. Arya thought that was stupid. Harren and his sons had died in Kingspyre Tower, that was why it had that name, so why should they cross the yard to haunt her? The Wailing Tower only wailed when the wind blew from the north, and that was just the sound the air made blowing through the cracks in the stones where they had fissured from the heat. if there were ghosts in Harrenhal, they never troubled her. It was the living men she feared, Weese and Ser Gregor Clegane and Lord Tywin Lannister himself, who kept his apartments in Kingspyre Tower, still the tallest and mightiest of all, though lopsided beneath the weight of the slagged stone that made it look like some giant half-melted black candle. She wondered what Lord Tywin would do if she marched up to him and confessed to being Arya Stark, but she knew she'd never get near enough to talk to him, and anyhow he'd never believe her if she did, and afterward Weese would beat her bloody. In his own small strutting way, Weese was nearly as scary as Ser Gregor. The Mountain swatted men like flies, but most of the time he did not even seem to know the fly was there. Weese always knew you were there, and what you were doing, and sometimes what you were thinking. He would hit at the slightest provocation, and he had a dog who was near as bad as he was, an ugly spotted bitch that smelled worse than any dog Arya had ever known. Once she saw him set the dog on a latrine boy who'd annoyed him. She tore a big chunk out of the boy's calf while Weese laughed. It took him only three days to earn the place of honor in her nightly prayers. "Weese," she would whisper, first of all. "Dunsen, Chiswyck, Polliver, Raff the Sweetling. The Tickler and the Hound. Ser Gregor, Ser Amory, Ser Ilyn, Ser Meryn, King Joffrey, Queen Cersei." If she let herself forget even one of them, how would she ever find him again to kill him? On the road Arya had felt like a sheep, but Harrenhal turned her into a mouse. She was grey as a mouse in her scratchy wool shift, and like a mouse she kept to the crannies and crevices and dark holes of the castle, scurrying out of the way of the mighty. Sometimes she thought they were all mice within those thick walls, even the knights and the great lords. The size of the castle made even Gregor Clegane seem small. Harrenhal covered thrice as much ground as Winterfell, and its buildings were so much larger they could scarcely be compared. Its stables housed a thousand horses, its godswood covered twenty acres, its kitchens were as large as Winterfell's Great Hall, and its own great hall, grandly named the Hall of a Hundred Hearths even though it only had thirty and some (Arya had tried to count them, twice, but she came up with thirty-three once and thirty-five the other time) 244 was so cavernous that Lord Tywin could have feasted his entire host, though he never did. Walls, doors, halls, steps, everything was built to an inhuman scale that made Arya remember the stories Old Nan used to tell of the giants who lived beyond the Wall. And as lords and ladies never notice the little grey mice under their feet, Arya heard all sorts of secrets just by keeping her ears open as she went about her duties. Pretty Pia from the buttery was a slut who was working her way through every knight in the castle. The wife of the gaoler was with child, but the real father was either Ser Alyn Stackspear or a singer called Whitesmile Wat. Lord Lefford made mock of ghosts at table, but always kept a candle burning by his bed. Ser Dunaver's squire Jodge could not hold his water when he slept. The cooks despised Ser Harys Swyft and spit in all his food. Once she even overheard Maester Tothmure's serving girl confiding to her brother about some message that said Joffrey was a bastard and not the rightful king at all. "Lord Tywin told him to burn the letter and never speak such filth again," the girl whispered. King Robert's brothers Stannis and Renly had joined the fighting, she heard. "And both of them kings now," Weese said. "Realm's got more kings than a castle's got rats." Even Lannister men questioned how long Joffrey would hold the Iron Throne. "The lad's got no army but them gold cloaks, and he's ruled by a eunuch, a dwarf, and a woman," she heard a lordling mutter in his cups. "What good will the likes of them be if it comes to battle?" There was always talk of Beric Dondarrion. A fat archer once said the Bloody Mummers had slain him, but the others only laughed. "Lorch killed the man at Rushing Falls, and the Mountain's slain him twice. Got me a silver stag says he don't stay dead this time neither." Arya did not know who Bloody Mummers were until a fortnight later, when the queerest company of men she'd ever seen arrived at Harrenhal. Beneath the standard of a black goat with bloody horns rode copper men with bells in their braids; lancers astride striped blackand-white horses; bowmen with powdered cheeks; squat hairy men with shaggy shields; brown-skinned men in feathered cloaks; a wispy fool in green-and-pink motley; swordsmen with fantastic forked beards dyed green and purple and silver; spearmen with colored scars that covered their cheeks; a slender man in septon's robes, a fatherly one in maester's grey, and a sickly one whose leather cloak was fringed with long blond hair. At their head was a man stick-thin and very tall, with a drawn emaciated face made even longer by the ropy black beard that grew from his pointed chin nearly to his waist. The helm that hung from his saddle horn was black steel, fashioned in the shape of a goat's head. About his neck he wore a chain made of linked coins of many different sizes, shapes, and metals, and his horse was one of the strange black-and-white ones. "You don't want to know that lot, Weasel," Weese said when he saw her looking at the goat-helmed man. Two of his drinking friends were with him, men-at-arms in service to Lord Lefford. "Who are they?" she asked. One of the soldiers laughed. "The Footmen, girl. Toes of the Goat. Lord Tywin's Bloody Mummers." "Pease for wits. You get her flayed, you can scrub the bloody steps," said Weese. "They're sellswords, Weasel girl. Call themselves the Brave Companions. Don't use them other names where they can hear, or they'll hurt you bad. The goat-helm's their captain, Lord Vargo Hoat." "He's no fucking lord," said the second soldier. "I heard Ser Amory say so. He's just some sellsword with a mouth full of slobber and a high opinion of hisself." "Aye," said Weese, "but she better call him lord if she wants to keep all her parts." 245 Arya looked at Vargo Hoat again. How many monsters does Lord Tywin have? The Brave Companions were housed in the Widow's Tower, so Arya need not serve them. She was glad of that; on the very night they arrived, fighting broke out between the sellswords and some Lannister men. Ser Harys Swyft's squire was stabbed to death and two of the Bloody Mummers were wounded. The next morning Lord Tywin hanged them both from the gatehouse walls, along with one of Lord Lydden's archers. Weese said the archer had started all the trouble by taunting the sellswords over Beric Dondarrion. After the hanged men had stopped kicking, Vargo Hoat and Ser Harys embraced and kissed and swore to love each other always as Lord Tywin looked on. Arya thought it was funny the way Vargo Hoat lisped and slobbered, but she knew better than to laugh. The Bloody Mummers did not linger long at Harrenhal, but before they rode out again, Arya heard one of them saying how a northern army under Roose Bolton had occupied the ruby ford of the Trident. "If he crosses, Lord Tywin will smash him again like he did on the Green Fork," a Lannister bowman said, but his fellows jeered him down. "Bolton'll never cross, not till the Young Wolf marches from Riverrun with his wild northmen and all them wolves." Arya had not known her brother was so near. Riverrun was much closer than Winterfell, though she was not certain where it lay in relation to Harrenhal. I could find out somehow, I know I could, if only I could get away. When she thought of seeing Robb's face again Arya had to bite her lip. And I want to see Jon too, and Bran and Rickon, and Mother. Even Sansa . . . I'll kiss her and beg her pardons like a proper lady, she'll like that. From the courtyard talk she'd learned that the upper chambers of the Tower of Dread housed three dozen captives taken during some battle on the Green Fork of the Trident. Most had been given freedom of the castle in return for their pledge not to attempt escape. They vowed not to escape, Arya told herself, but they never swore not to help me escape. The captives ate at their own table in the Hall of a Hundred Hearths, and could often be seen about the grounds. Four brothers took their exercise together every day, fighting with staves and wooden shields in the Flowstone Yard. Three of them were Freys of the Crossing, the fourth their bastard brother. They were only there a short time, though; one morning two other brothers arrived under a peace banner with a chest of gold, and ransomed them from the knights who'd captured them. The six Freys all left together. No one ransomed the northmen, though. One fat lordling haunted the kitchens, Hot Pie told her, always looking for a morsel. His mustache was so bushy that it covered his mouth, and the clasp that held his cloak was a silver-and-sapphire trident. He belonged to Lord Tywin, but the fierce, bearded young man who liked to walk the battlements alone in a black cloak patterned with white suns had been taken by some hedge knight who meant to get rich off him. Sansa would have known who he was, and the fat one too, but Arya had never taken much interest in titles and sigils. Whenever Septa Mordane had gone on about the history of this house and that house, she was inclined to drift and dream and wonder when the lesson would be done. She did remember Lord Cerwyn, though. His lands had been close to Winterfell, so he and his son Cley had often visited. Yet as fate would have it, he was the only captive who was never seen; he was abed in a tower cell, recovering from a wound. For days and days Arya tried to work out how she might steal past the door guards to see him. If he knew her, he would be honor-bound to help her. A lord would have gold for a certainty, they all did; perhaps he would pay some of Lord Tywin's own sellswords to take her to Riverrun. Father had always said that most sellswords would betray anyone for enough gold. 246 Then one morning she spied three women in the cowled grey robes of the silent sisters loading a corpse into their wagon. The body was sewn into a cloak of the finest silk, decorated with a battle-axe sigil. When Arya asked who it was, one of the guards told her that Lord Cerwyn had died. The words felt like a kick in the belly. He could never have helped you anyway, she thought as the sisters drove the wagon through the gate. He couldn't even help himself, you stupid mouse. After that it was back to scrubbing and scurrying and listening at doors. Lord Tywin would soon march on Riverrun, she heard, or he would drive south to Highgarden, no one would ever expect that. No, he must defend King's Landing, Stannis was the greatest threat. He'd sent Gregor Clegane and Vargo Hoat to destroy Roose Bolton and remove the dagger from his back. He'd sent ravens to the Eyrie, he meant to wed the Lady Lysa Arryn and win the Vale. He'd bought a ton of silver to forge magic swords that would slay the Stark wargs. He was writing Lady Stark to make a peace, the Kingslayer would soon be freed. Though ravens came and went every day, Lord Tywin himself spent most of his days behind closed doors with his war council. Arya caught glimpses of him, but always from afar—once walking the walls in the company of three maesters and the fat captive with the bushy mustache, once riding out with his lords bannermen to visit the encampments, but most often standing in an arch of the covered gallery watching men at practice in the yard below. He stood with his hands locked together on the gold pommel of his longsword. They said Lord Tywin loved gold most of all; he even shit gold, she heard one squire jest. The Lannister lord was strong-looking for an old man, with stiff golden whiskers and a bald head. There was something in his face that reminded Arya of her own father, even though they looked nothing alike. He has a lord's face, that's all, she told herself. She remembered hearing her lady mother tell Father to put on his lord's face and go deal with some matter. Father had laughed at that. She could not imagine Lord Tywin ever laughing at anything. One afternoon, while she was waiting her turn to draw a pail of water from the well, she heard the hinges of the east gate groaning. A party of men rode under the portcullis at a walk. When she spied the manticore crawling across the shield of their leader, a stab of hate shot through her. In the light of day, Ser Amory Lorch looked less frightening than he had by torchlight, but he still had the pig's eyes she recalled. One of the women said that his men had ridden all the way around the lake chasing Beric Dondarrion and slaying rebels. We weren't rebels, Arya thought. We were the Night's Watch; the Night's Watch takes no side. Ser Amory had fewer men than she remembered, though, and many wounded. I hope their wounds fester. I hope they all die. Then she saw the three near the end of the column. Rorge had donned a black half-helm with a broad iron nasal that made it hard to see that he did not have a nose. Biter rode ponderously beside him on a destrier that looked ready to collapse under his weight. Half-healed burns covered his body, making him even more hideous than before. But Jaqen H'ghar still smiled. His garb was still ragged and filthy, but he had found time to wash and brush his hair. It streamed down across his shoulders, red and white and shiny, and Arya heard the girls giggling to each other in admiration. I should have let the fire have them. Gendry said to, I should have listened. If she hadn't thrown them that axe they'd all be dead. For a moment she was afraid, but they rode past her without a flicker of interest. Only Jaqen H'ghar so much as glanced in her direction, and his eyes passed right over her. He does not know me, she thought. Arry was a fierce little boy with a sword, and I'm just a grey mouse girl with a pail. 247 She spent the rest of that day scrubbing steps inside the Wailing Tower. By evenfall her hands were raw and bleeding and her arms so sore they trembled when she lugged the pail back to the cellar. Too tired even for food, Arya begged Weese's pardons and crawled into her straw to sleep. "Weese," she yawned. "Dunsen, Chiswyck, Polliver, Raff the Sweetling. The Tickler and the Hound. Ser Gregor, Ser Amory, Ser Ilyn, Ser Meryn, King Joffrey, Queen Cersei." She thought she might add three more names to her prayer, but she was too tired to decide tonight. Arya was dreaming of wolves running wild through the wood when a strong hand clamped down over her mouth like smooth warm stone, solid and unyielding. She woke at once, squirming and struggling. "A girl says nothing," a voice whispered close behind her ear. "A girl keeps her lips closed, no one hears, and friends may talk in secret. Yes?" Heart pounding, Arya managed the tiniest of nods. Jaqen H'ghar took his hand away. The cellar was black as pitch and she could not see his face, even inches away. She could smell him, though; his skin smelled clean and soapy, and he had scented his hair. "A boy becomes a girl," he murmured. "I was always a girl. I didn't think you saw me." "A man sees. A man knows." She remembered that she hated him. "You scared me. You're one of them now, I should have let you burn. What are you doing here? Go away or I'll yell for Weese." "A man pays his debts. A man owes three." "Three?" "The Red God has his due, sweet girl, and only death may pay for life. This girl took three that were his. This girl must give three in their places. Speak the names, and a man will do the rest." He wants to help me, Arya realized with a rush of hope that made her dizzy. "Take me to Riverrun, it's not far, if we stole some horses we could—" He laid a finger on her lips. "Three lives you shall have of me. No more, no less. Three and we are done. So a girl must ponder." He kissed her hair softly. "But not too long." By the time Arya lit her stub of a candle, only a faint smell remained of him, a whiff of ginger and cloves lingering in the air. The woman in the next niche rolled over on her straw and complained of the light, so Arya blew it out. When she closed her eyes, she saw faces swimming before her. Joffrey and his mother, Ilyn Payne and Meryn Trant and Sandor Clegane . . . but they were in King's Landing hundreds of miles away, and Ser Gregor had lingered only a few nights before departing again for more foraging, taking Raff and Chiswyck and the Tickler with him. Ser Amory Lorch was here, though, and she hated him almost as much. Didn't she? She wasn't certain. And there was always Weese. She thought of him again the next morning, when lack of sleep made her yawn. "Weasel," Weese purred, "next time I see that mouth droop open, I'll pull out your tongue and feed it to my bitch." He twisted her ear between his fingers to make certain she'd heard, and told her to get back to those steps, he wanted them clean down to the third landing by nightfall. As she worked, Arya thought about the people she wanted dead. She pretended she could see their faces on the steps, and scrubbed harder to wipe them away. The Starks were at war with the Lannisters and she was a Stark, so she should kill as many Lannisters as she could, that was what you did in wars. But she didn't think she should trust Jaqen. I should kill them myself. Whenever her father had condemned a man to death, he did the deed himself with Ice, 248 his greatsword. "If you would take a man's life, you owe it to him to look him in the face and hear his last words," she'd heard him tell Robb and Jon once. The next day she avoided Jaqen H'ghar, and the day after that. It was not hard. She was very small and Harrenhal was very large, full of places where a mouse could hide. And then Ser Gregor returned, earlier than expected, driving a herd of goats this time in place of a herd of prisoners. She heard he'd lost four men in one of Lord Beric's night raids, but those Arya hated returned unscathed and took up residence on the second floor of the Wailing Tower. Weese saw that they were well supplied with drink. "They always have a good thirst, that lot," he grumbled. "Weasel, go up and ask if they've got any clothes that need mending, I'll have the women see to it." Arya ran up her well-scrubbed steps. No one paid her any mind when she entered. Chiswyck was seated by the fire with a horn of ale to hand, telling one of his funny stories. She dared not interrupt, unless she wanted a bloody lip. "After the Hand's tourney, it were, before the war come," Chiswyck was saying. "We were on our ways back west, seven of us with Ser Gregor. Raff was with me, and young Joss Stilwood, he'd squired for Ser in the lists. Well, we come on this pisswater river, running high on account there'd been rains. No way to ford, but there's an alehouse near, so there we repair. Ser rousts the brewer and tells him to keep our horns full till the waters fall, and you should see the man's pig eyes shine at the sight o' silver. So he's fetching us ale, him and his daughter, and poor thin stuff it is, no more'n brown piss, which don't make me any happier, nor Ser neither. And all the time this brewer's saying how glad he is to have us, custom being slow on account o' them rains. The fool won't shut his yap, not him, though Ser is saying not a word, just brooding on the Knight o' Pansies and that bugger's trick he played. You can see how tight his mouth sits, so me and the other lads we know better'n to say a squeak to him, but this brewer he's got to talk, he even asks how m'lord fared in the jousting. Ser just gave him this look." Chiswyck cackled, quaffed his ale, and wiped the foam away with the back of his hand. "Meanwhile, this daughter of his has been fetching and pouring, a fat little thing, eighteen or so—" "Thirteen, more like," Raff the Sweetling drawled. "Well, be that as it may, she's not much to look at, but Eggon's been drinking and gets to touching her, and might be I did a little touching meself, and Raff's telling young Stilwood that he ought t' drag the girl upstairs and make hisself a man, giving the lad courage as it were. Finally Joss reaches up under her skirt, and she shrieks and drops her flagon and goes running off to the kitchen. Well, it would have ended right there, only what does the old fool do but he goes to Ser and asks him to make us leave the girl alone, him being an anointed knight and all such." "Ser Gregor, he wasn't paying no mind to none of our fun, but now he looks, you know how he does, and he commands that the girl be brought before him. Now the old man has to drag her out of the kitchen, and no one to blame but hisself. Ser looks her over and says, 'So this is the whore you're so concerned for' and this besotted old fool says, 'My Layna's no whore, ser' right to Gregor's face. Ser, he never blinks, just says, 'She is now' tosses the old man another silver, rips the dress off the wench, and takes her right there on the table in front of her da, her flopping and wiggling like a rabbit and making these noises. The look on the old man's face, I laughed so hard ale was coming out me nose. Then this boy hears the noise, the son I figure, and comes rushing up from the cellar, so Raff has to stick a dirk in his belly. By then Ser's done, so he goes back to his drinking and we all have a turn. Tobbot, you know how he is, he flops her over and goes in the back way. The girl was done fighting by the time I had her, maybe she'd decided she liked it after all, though to tell the truth I wouldn't have 249 minded a little wiggling. And now here's the best bit . . . when it's all done, Ser tells the old man that he wants his change. The girl wasn't worth a silver, he says . . . and damned if that old man didn't fetch a fistful of coppers, beg m'lord's pardon, and thank him for the custom!" The men all roared, none louder than Chiswyck himself, who laughed so hard at his own story that snot dribbled from his nose down into his scraggy grey beard. Arya stood in the shadows of the stairwell and watched him. She crept back down to the cellars without saying a word. When Weese found that she hadn't asked about the clothes, he yanked down her breeches and caned her until blood ran down her thighs, but Arya closed her eyes and thought of all the sayings Syrio had taught her, so she scarcely felt it. Two nights later, he sent her to the Barracks Hall to serve at table. She was carrying a flagon of wine and pouring when she glimpsed Jaqen H'ghar at his trencher across the aisle. Chewing her lip, Arya glanced around warily to make certain Weese was not in sight. Fear cuts deeper than swords, she told herself. She took a step, and another, and with each she felt less a mouse. She worked her way down the bench, filling wine cups. Rorge sat to Jaqen's right, deep drunk, but he took no note of her. Arya leaned close and whispered, "Chiswyck," right in Jaqen's ear. The Lorathi gave no sign that he had heard. When her flagon was empty, Arya hurried down to the cellars to refill it from the cask, and quickly returned to her pouring. No one had died of thirst while she was gone, nor even noted her brief absence. Nothing happened the next day, nor the day after, but on the third day Arya went to the kitchens with Weese to fetch their dinner. "One of the Mountain's men fell off a wallwalk last night and broke his fool neck," she heard Weese tell a cook. "Drunk?" the woman asked. "No more'n usual. Some are saying it was Harren's ghost flung him down." He snorted to show what he thought of such notions. It wasn't Harren, Arya wanted to say, it was me. She had killed Chiswyck with a whisper, and she would kill two more before she was through. I'm the ghost in Harrenhal, she thought. And that night, there was one less name to hate. CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE CATELYN The meeting place was a grassy sward dotted with pale grey mushrooms and the raw stumps of felled trees. "We are the first, my lady," Hallis Mollen said as they reined up amidst the stumps, alone between the armies. The direwolf banner of House Stark flapped and fluttered atop the lance he bore. Catelyn could not see the sea from here, but she could feel how close it was. The smell of salt was heavy on the wind gusting from the east. Stannis Baratheon's foragers had cut the trees down for his siege towers and catapults. Catelyn wondered how long the grove had stood, and whether Ned had rested here when he led his host south to lift the last siege of Storm's End. He had won a great victory that day, all the greater for being bloodless. Gods grant that I shall do the same, Catelyn prayed. Her own liegemen thought she was mad even to come. "This is no fight of ours, my lady," Ser Wendel Manderly had said. "I know the king would not wish his mother to put herself at risk." 250 "We are all at risk," she told him, perhaps too sharply. "Do you think I wish to be here, ser?" I belong at Riverrun with my dying father, at Winterfell with my sons. "Robb sent me south to speak for him, and speak for him I shall." It would be no easy thing to forge a peace between these brothers, Catelyn knew, yet for the good of the realm, it must be tried. Across rain-sodden fields and stony ridges, she could see the great castle of Storm's End rearing up against the sky, its back to the unseen sea. Beneath that mass of pale grey stone, the encircling army of Lord Stannis Baratheon looked as small and insignificant as mice with banners. The songs said that Storm's End had been raised in ancient days by Durran, the first Storm King, who had won the love of the fair Elenei, daughter of the sea god and the goddess of the wind. On the night of their wedding, Elenei had yielded her maidenhood to a mortal's love and thus doomed herself to a mortal's death, and her grieving parents had unleashed their wrath and sent the winds and waters to batter down Durran's hold. His friends and brothers and wedding guests were crushed beneath collapsing walls or blown out to sea, but Elenei sheltered Durran within her arms so he took no harm, and when the dawn came at last he declared war upon the gods and vowed to rebuild. Five more castles he built, each larger and stronger than the last, only to see them smashed asunder when the gale winds came howling up Shipbreaker Bay, driving great walls of water before them. His lords pleaded with him to build inland; his priests told him he must placate the gods by giving Elenei back to the sea; even his smallfolk begged him to relent. Durran would have none of it. A seventh castle he raised, most massive of all. Some said the children of the forest helped him build it, shaping the stones with magic; others claimed that a small boy told him what he must do, a boy who would grow to be Bran the Builder. No matter how the tale was told, the end was the same. Though the angry gods threw storm after storm against it, the seventh castle stood defiant, and Durran Godsgrief and fair Elenei dwelt there together until the end of their days. Gods do not forget, and still the gales came raging up the narrow sea. Yet Storm's End endured, through centuries and tens of centuries, a castle like no other. Its great curtain wall was a hundred feet high, unbroken by arrow slit or postern, everywhere rounded, curving, smooth, its stones fit so cunningly together that nowhere was crevice nor angle nor gap by which the wind might enter. That wall was said to be forty feet thick at its narrowest, and near eighty on the seaward face, a double course of stones with an inner core of sand and rubble. Within that mighty bulwark, the kitchens and stables and yards sheltered safe from wind and wave. Of towers, there was but one, a colossal drum tower, windowless where it faced the sea, so large that it was granary and barracks and feast hall and lord's dwelling all in one, crowned by massive battlements that made it look from afar like a spiked fist atop an up-thrust arm. "My lady," Hal Mollen called. Two riders had emerged from the tidy little camp beneath the castle, and were coming toward them at a slow walk. "That will be King Stannis." "No doubt." Catelyn watched them come. Stannis it must be, yet that is not the Baratheon banner. It was a bright yellow, not the rich gold of Renly's standards, and the device it bore was red, though she could not make out its shape. Renly would be last to arrive. He had told her as much when she set out. He did not propose to mount his horse until he saw his brother well on his way. The first to arrive must wait on the other, and Renly would do no waiting. It is a sort of game kings play, she told herself. Well, she was no king, so she need not play it. Catelyn was practiced at waiting. As he neared, she saw that Stannis wore a crown of red gold with points fashioned in the shape of flames. His belt was studded with garnets and yellow topaz, and a great square-cut ruby was set in the hilt of the sword he wore. Otherwise his dress was plain: studded leather 251 jerkin over quilted doublet, worn boots, breeches of brown rough-spun. The device on his sun-yellow banner showed a red heart surrounded by a blaze of orange fire. The crowned stag was there, yes . . . shrunken and enclosed within the heart. Even more curious was his standard-bearer—a woman, garbed all in reds, face shadowed within the deep hood of her scarlet cloak. A red priestess, Catelyn thought, wondering. The sect was numerous and powerful in the Free Cities and the distant east, but there were few in the Seven Kingdoms. "Lady Stark," Stannis Baratheon said with chill courtesy as he reined up. He inclined his head, balder than she remembered. "Lord Stannis," she returned. Beneath the tight-trimmed beard his heavy jaw clenched hard, yet he did not hector her about titles. For that she was duly grateful. "I had not thought to find you at Storm's End." "I had not thought to be here." His deep-set eyes regarded her uncomfortably. This was not a man made for easy courtesies. "I am sorry for your lord's death," he said, "though Eddard Stark was no friend to me." "He was never your enemy, my lord. When the Lords Tyrell and Redwyne held you prisoned in that castle, starving, it was Eddard Stark who broke the siege." "At my brother's command, not for love of me," Stannis answered. "Lord Eddard did his duty, I will not deny it. Did I ever do less? I should have been Robert's Hand." "That was your brother's will. Ned never wanted it." "Yet he took it. That which should have been mine. Still, I give you my word, you shall have justice for his murder." How they loved to promise heads, these men who would be king. "Your brother promised me the same. But if truth be told, I would sooner have my daughters back, and leave justice to the gods. Cersei still holds my Sansa, and of Arya there has been no word since the day of Robert's death." "If your children are found when I take the city, they shall be sent to you." Alive or dead, his tone implied. "And when shall that be, Lord Stannis? King's Landing is close to your Dragonstone, but I find you here instead." "You are frank, Lady Stark. Very well, I'll answer you frankly. To take the city, I need the power of these southron lords I see across the field. My brother has them. I must needs take them from him." "Men give their allegiance where they will, my lord. These lords swore fealty to Robert and House Baratheon. If you and your brother were to put aside your quarrel—" "I have no quarrel with Renly, should he prove dutiful. I am his elder, and his king. I want only what is mine by rights. Renly owes me loyalty and obedience. I mean to have it. From him, and from these other lords." Stannis studied her face. "And what cause brings you to this field, my lady? Has House Stark cast its lot with my brother, is that the way of it?" This one will never bend, she thought, yet she must try nonetheless. Too much was at stake. "My son reigns as King in the North, by the will of our lords and people. He bends the knee to no man, but holds out the hand of friendship to all." "Kings have no friends," Stannis said bluntly, "only subjects and enemies." "And brothers," a cheerful voice called out behind her. Catelyn glanced over her shoulder as Lord Renly's palfrey picked her way through the stumps. The younger Baratheon was 252 splendid in his green velvet doublet and satin cloak trimmed in vair. The crown of golden roses girded his temples, jade stag's head rising over his forehead, long black hair spilling out beneath. Jagged chunks of black diamond studded his swordbelt, and a chain of gold and emeralds looped around his neck. Renly had chosen a woman to carry his banner as well, though Brienne hid face and form behind plate armor that gave no hint of her sex. Atop her twelve-foot lance, the crowned stag pranced black-on-gold as the wind off the sea rippled the cloth. His brother's greeting was curt. "Lord Renly." "King Renly. Can that truly be you, Stannis?" Stannis frowned. "Who else should it be?" Renly gave an easy shrug. "When I saw that standard, I could not be certain. Whose banner do you bear?" "Mine own." The red-clad priestess spoke up. "The king has taken for his sigil the fiery heart of the Lord of Light." Renly seemed amused by that. "All for the good. If we both use the same banner, the battle will be terribly confused." Catelyn said, "Let us hope there will be no battle. We three share a common foe who would destroy us all." Stannis studied her, unsmiling. "The Iron Throne is mine by rights. All those who deny that are my foes." "The whole of the realm denies it, brother," said Renly. "Old men deny it with their death rattle, and unborn children deny it in their mothers' wombs. They deny it in Dorne and they deny it on the Wall. No one wants you for their king. Sorry." Stannis clenched his jaw, his face taut. "I swore I would never treat with you while you wore your traitor's crown. Would that I had kept to that vow." "This is folly," Catelyn said sharply. "Lord Tywin sits at Harrenhal with twenty thousand swords. The remnants of the Kingslayer's army have regrouped at the Golden Tooth, another Lannister host gathers beneath the shadow of Casterly Rock, and Cersei and her son hold King's Landing and your precious Iron Throne. You each name yourself king, yet the kingdom bleeds, and no one lifts a sword to defend it but my son." Renly shrugged. "Your son has won a few battles. I shall win the war. The Lannisters can wait my pleasure." "If you have proposals to make, make them," Stannis said brusquely, "or I will be gone." "Very well," said Renly. "I propose that you dismount, bend your knee, and swear me your allegiance." Stannis choked back rage. "That you shall never have." "You served Robert, why not me?" "Robert was my elder brother. You are the younger." "Younger, bolder, and far more comely . . ." ". . . and a thief and a usurper besides." Renly shrugged. "The Targaryens called Robert usurper. He seemed to be able to bear the shame. So shall I." 253 This will not do. "Listen to yourselves! If you were sons of mine, I would bang your heads together and lock you in a bedchamber until you remembered that you were brothers." Stannis frowned at her. "You presume too much, Lady Stark. I am the rightful king, and your son no less a traitor than my brother here. His day will come as well." The naked threat fanned her fury. "You are very free to name others traitor and usurper, my lord, yet how are you any different? You say you alone are the rightful king, yet it seems to me that Robert had two sons. By all the laws of the Seven Kingdoms, Prince Joffrey is his rightful heir, and Tommen after him . . . and we are all traitors, however good our reasons." Renly laughed. "You must forgive Lady Catelyn, Stannis. She's come all the way down from Riverrun, a long way ahorse. I fear she never saw your little letter." "Joffrey is not my brother's seed," Stannis said bluntly. "Nor is Tommen. They are bastards. The girl as well. All three of them abominations born of incest." Would even Cersei be so mad? Catelyn was speechless. "Isn't that a sweet story, my lady?" Renly asked. "I was camped at Horn Hill when Lord Tarly received his letter, and I must say, it took my breath away." He smiled at his brother. "I had never suspected you were so clever, Stannis. Were it only true, you would indeed be Robert's heir." "Were it true? Do you name me a liar?" "Can you prove any word of this fable?" Stannis ground his teeth. Robert could never have known, Catelyn thought, or Cersei would have lost her head in an instant. "Lord Stannis," she asked, "if you knew the queen to be guilty of such monstrous crimes, why did you keep silent?" "I did not keep silent," Stannis declared. "I brought my suspicions to Jon Arryn." "Rather than your own brother?" "My brother's regard for me was never more than dutiful," said Stannis. "From me, such accusations would have seemed peevish and self-serving, a means of placing myself first in the line of succession. I believed Robert would be more disposed to listen if the charges came from Lord Arryn, whom he loved." "Ah," said Renly. "So we have the word of a dead man." "Do you think he died by happenstance, you purblind fool? Cersei had him poisoned, for fear he would reveal her. Lord Jon had been gathering certain proofs—" "—which doubtless died with him. How inconvenient." Catelyn was remembering, fitting pieces together. "My sister Lysa accused the queen of killing her husband in a letter she sent me at Winterfell," she admitted. "Later, in the Eyrie, she laid the murder at the feet of the queen's brother Tyrion." Stannis snorted. "If you step in a nest of snakes, does it matter which one bites you first?" "All this of snakes and incest is droll, but it changes nothing. You may well have the better claim, Stannis, but I still have the larger army." Renly's hand slid inside his cloak. Stannis saw, and reached at once for the hilt of his sword, but before he could draw steel his brother produced . . . a peach. "Would you like one, brother?" Renly asked, smiling. "From Highgarden. You've never tasted anything so sweet, I promise you." He took a bite. Juice ran from the corner of his mouth. 254 "I did not come here to eat fruit." Stannis was fuming. "My lords!" Catelyn said. "We ought to be hammering out the terms of an alliance, not trading taunts." "A man should never refuse to taste a peach," Renly said as he tossed the stone away. "He may never get the chance again. Life is short, Stannis. Remember what the Starks say. Winter is coming." He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. "I did not come here to be threatened, either." "Nor were you," Renly snapped back. "When I make threats, you'll know it. If truth be told, I've never liked you, Stannis, but you are my own blood, and I have no wish to slay you. So if it is Storm's End you want, take it . . . as a brother's gift. As Robert once gave it to me, I give it to you." "It is not yours to give. It is mine by rights." Sighing, Renly half turned in the saddle. "What am I to do with this brother of mine, Brienne? He refuses my peach, he refuses my castle, he even shunned my wedding . . ." "We both know your wedding was a mummer's farce. A year ago you were scheming to make the girl one of Robert's whores." "A year ago I was scheming to make the girl Robert's queen," Renly said, "but what does it matter? The boar got Robert and I got Margaery. You'll be pleased to know she came to me a maid." "In your bed she's like to die that way." "Oh, I expect I'll get a son on her within the year. Pray, how many sons do you have, Stannis? Oh, yes—none." Renly smiled innocently. "As to your daughter, I understand. If my wife looked like yours, I'd send my fool to service her as well." "Enough!" Stannis roared. "I will not be mocked to my face, do you hear me? I will not!" He yanked his longsword from its scabbard. The steel gleamed strangely bright in the wan sunlight, now red, now yellow, now blazing white. The air around it seemed to shimmer, as if from heat. Catelyn's horse whinnied and backed away a step, but Brienne moved between the brothers, her own blade in hand. "Put up your steel!" she shouted at Stannis. Cersei Lannister is laughing herself breathless, Catelyn thought wearily. Stannis pointed his shining sword at his brother. "I am not without mercy," thundered he who was notoriously without mercy. "Nor do I wish to sully Lightbringer with a brother's blood. For the sake of the mother who bore us both, I will give you this night to rethink your folly, Renly. Strike your banners and come to me before dawn, and I will grant you Storm's End and your old seat on the council and even name you my heir until a son is born to me. Otherwise, I shall destroy you." Renly laughed. "Stannis, that's a very pretty sword, I'll grant you, but I think the glow off it has ruined your eyes. Look across the fields, brother. Can you see all those banners?" "Do you think a few bolts of cloth will make you king?" "Tyrell swords will make me king. Rowan and Tarly and Caron will make me king, with axe and mace and warhammer. Tarth arrows and Penrose lances, Fossoway, Cuy, Mullendore, Estermont, Selmy, Hightower, Oakheart, Crane, Caswell, Blackbar, Morrigen, Beesbury, Shermer, Dunn, Footly . . . even House Florent, your own wife's brothers and uncles, they will make me king. All the chivalry of the south rides with me, and that is the least part of my power. My foot is coming behind, a hundred thousand swords and spears and pikes. And you 255 will destroy me? With what, pray? That paltry rabble I see there huddled under the castle walls? I'll call them five thousand and be generous, codfish lords and onion knights and sellswords. Half of them are like to come over to me before the battle starts. You have fewer than four hundred horse, my scouts tell me—freeriders in boiled leather who will not stand an instant against armored lances. I do not care how seasoned a warrior you think you are, Stannis, that host of yours won't survive the first charge of my vanguard." "We shall see, brother." Some of the light seemed to go out of the world when Stannis slid his sword back into its scabbard. "Come the dawn, we shall see." "I hope your new god's a merciful one, brother." Stannis snorted and galloped away, disdainful. The red priestess lingered a moment behind. "Look to your own sins, Lord Renly," she said as she wheeled her horse around. Catelyn and Lord Renly returned together to the camp where his thousands and her few waited their return. "That was amusing, if not terribly profitable," he commented. "I wonder where I can get a sword like that? Well, doubtless Loras will make me a gift of it after the battle. It grieves me that it must come to this." "You have a cheerful way of grieving," said Catelyn, whose distress was not feigned. "Do I?" Renly shrugged. "So be it. Stannis was never the most cherished of brothers, I confess. Do you suppose this tale of his is true? If Joffrey is the Kingslayer's get—" "—your brother is the lawful heir." "While he lives," Renly admitted. "Though it's a fool's law, wouldn't you agree? Why the oldest son, and not the best-fitted? The crown will suit me, as it never suited Robert and would not suit Stannis. I have it in me to be a great king, strong yet generous, clever, just, diligent, loyal to my friends and terrible to my enemies, yet capable of forgiveness, patient—" "—humble?" Catelyn supplied. Renly laughed. "You must allow a king some flaws, my lady." Catelyn felt very tired. It had all been for nothing. The Baratheon brothers would drown each other in blood while her son faced the Lannisters alone, and nothing she could say or do would stop it. It is past time I went back to Riverrun to close my father's eyes, she thought. That much at least I can do. I may be a poor envoy, but I am a good mourner, gods save me. Their camp was well sited atop a low stony ridge that ran from north to south. It was far more orderly than the sprawling encampment on the Mander, though only a quarter as large. When he'd learned of his brother's assault on Storm's End, Renly had split his forces, much as Robb had done at the Twins. His great mass of foot he had left behind at Bitterbridge with his young queen, his wagons, carts, draft animals, and all his cumbersome siege machinery, while Renly himself led his knights and freeriders in a swift dash east. How like his brother Robert he was, even in that . . . only Robert had always had Eddard Stark to temper his boldness with caution. Ned would surely have prevailed upon Robert to bring up his whole force, to encircle Stannis and besiege the besiegers. That choice Renly had denied himself in his headlong rush to come to grips with his brother. He had outdistanced his supply lines, left food and forage days behind with all his wagons and mules and oxen. He must come to battle soon, or starve. Catelyn sent Hal Mollen to tend to their horses while she accompanied Renly back to the royal pavilion at the heart of the encampment. Inside the walls of green silk, his captains and lords bannermen were waiting to hear word of the parley. "My brother has not changed," their young king told them as Brienne unfastened his cloak and lifted the gold-and-jade crown from 256 his brow. "Castles and courtesies will not appease him, he must have blood. Well, I am of a mind to grant his wish." "Your Grace, I see no need for battle here," Lord Mathis Rowan put in. "The castle is strongly garrisoned and well provisioned, Ser Cortnay Penrose is a seasoned commander, and the trebuchet has not been built that could breach the walls of Storm's End. Let Lord Stannis have his siege. He will find no joy in it, and whilst he sits cold and hungry and profitless, we will take King's Landing." "And have men say I feared to face Stannis?" "Only fools will say that," Lord Mathis argued. Renly looked to the others. "What say you all?" "I say that Stannis is a danger to you," Lord Randyll Tarly declared. "Leave him unblooded and he will only grow stronger, while your own power is diminished by battle. The Lannisters will not be beaten in a day. By the time you are done with them, Lord Stannis may be as strong as you . . . or stronger." Others chorused their agreement. The king looked pleased. "We shall fight, then." I have failed Robb as I failed Ned, Catelyn thought. "My lord," she announced. "If you are set on battle, my purpose here is done. I ask your leave to return to Riverrun." "You do not have it." Renly seated himself on a camp chair. She stiffened. "I had hoped to help you make a peace, my lord. I will not help you make a war." Renly gave a shrug. "I daresay we'll prevail without your five-and-twenty, my lady. I do not mean for you to take part in the battle, only to watch it." "I was at the Whispering Wood, my lord. I have seen enough butchery. I came here an envoy—" "And an envoy you shall leave," Renly said, "but wiser than you came. You shall see what befalls rebels with your own eyes, so your son can hear it from your own lips. We'll keep you safe, never fear." He turned away to make his dispositions. "Lord Mathis, you shall lead the center of my main battle. Bryce, you'll have the left. The right is mine. Lord Estermont, you shall command the reserve." "I shall not fail you, Your Grace," Lord Estermont replied. Lord Mathis Rowan spoke up. "Who shall have the van?" "Your Grace," said Ser Jon Fossoway, "I beg the honor." "Beg all you like," said Ser Guyard the Green, "by rights it should be one of the seven who strikes the first blow." "It takes more than a pretty cloak to charge a shield wall," Randyll Tarly announced. "I was leading Mace Tyrell's van when you were still sucking on your mother's teat, Guyard." A clamor filled the pavilion, as other men loudly set forth their claims. The knights of summer, Catelyn thought. Renly raised a hand. "Enough, my lords. If I had a dozen vans, all of you should have one, but the greatest glory by rights belongs to the greatest knight. Ser Loras shall strike the first blow." "With a glad heart, Your Grace." The Knight of Flowers knelt before the king. "Grant me your blessing, and a knight to ride beside me with your banner. Let the stag and rose go to battle side by side." Renly glanced about him. "Brienne." 257 "Your Grace?" She was still armored in her blue steel, though she had taken off her helm. The crowded tent was hot, and sweat plastered limp yellow hair to her broad, homely face. "My place is at your side. I am your sworn shield . . ." "One of seven," the king reminded her. "Never fear, four of your fellows will be with me in the fight." Brienne dropped to her knees. "If I must part from Your Grace, grant me the honor of arming you for battle." Catelyn heard someone snigger behind her. She loves him, poor thing, she thought sadly. She'd play his squire just to touch him, and never care how great a fool they think her. "Granted," Renly said. "Now leave me, all of you. Even kings must rest before a battle." "My lord," Catelyn said, "there was a small sept in the last village we passed. If you will not permit me to depart for Riverrun, grant me leave to go there and pray." "As you will. Ser Robar, give Lady Stark safe escort to this sept . . . but see that she returns to us by dawn." "You might do well to pray yourself," Catelyn added. "For victory?" "For wisdom." Renly laughed. "Loras, stay and help me pray. It's been so long I've quite forgotten how. As to the rest of you, I want every man in place by first light, armed, armored, and horsed. We shall give Stannis a dawn he will not soon forget." Dusk was falling when Catelyn left the pavilion. Ser Robar Royce fell in beside her. She knew him slightly—one of Bronze Yohn's sons, comely in a rough-hewn way, a tourney warrior of some renown. Renly had gifted him with a rainbow cloak and a suit of blood-red armor, and named him one of his seven. "You are a long way from the Vale, ser," she told him. "And you far from Winterfell, my lady." "I know what brought me here, but why have you come? This is not your battle, no more than it is mine." "I made it my battle when I made Renly my king." "The Royces are bannermen to House Arryn." "My lord father owes Lady Lysa fealty, as does his heir. A second son must find glory where he can." Ser Robar shrugged. "A man grows weary of tourneys." He could not be older than one-and-twenty, Catelyn thought, of an age with his king . . . but her king, her Robb, had more wisdom at fifteen than this youth had ever learned. Or so she prayed. In Catelyn's small corner of the camp, Shadd was slicing carrots into a kettle, Hal Mollen was dicing with three of his Winterfell men, and Lucas Blackwood sat sharpening his dagger. "Lady Stark," Lucas said when he saw her, "Mollen says it is to be battle at dawn." "Hal has the truth of it," she answered. And a loose tongue as well, it would seem. "Do we fight or flee?" "We pray, Lucas," she answered him. "We pray." CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO 258 SANSA "The longer you keep him waiting, the worse it will go for you," Sandor Clegane warned her. Sansa tried to hurry, but her fingers fumbled at buttons and knots. The Hound was always rough-tongued, but something in the way he had looked at her filled her with dread. Had Joffrey found out about her meetings with Ser Dontos? Please no, she thought as she brushed out her hair. Ser Dontos was her only hope. I have to look pretty, Joff likes me to look pretty, he's always liked me in this gown, this color. She smoothed the cloth down. The fabric was tight across her chest. When she emerged, Sansa walked on the Hound's left, away from the burned side of his face. "Tell me what I've done." "Not you. Your kingly brother." "Robb's a traitor." Sansa knew the words by rote. "I had no part in whatever he did." Gods be good, don't let it be the Kingslayer. If Robb had harmed Jaime Lannister, it would mean her life. She thought of Ser Ilyn, and how those terrible pale eyes stared pitilessly out of that gaunt pockmarked face. The Hound snorted. "They trained you well, little bird." He conducted her to the lower bailey, where a crowd had gathered around the archery butts. Men moved aside to let them through. She could hear Lord Gyles coughing. Loitering stablehands eyed her insolently, but Ser Horas Redwyne averted his gaze as she passed, and his brother Hobber pretended not to see her. A yellow cat was dying on the ground, mewling piteously, a crossbow quarrel through its ribs. Sansa stepped around it, feeling ill. Ser Dontos approached on his broomstick horse; since he'd been too drunk to mount his destrier at the tourney, the king had decreed that henceforth he must always go horsed. "Be brave," he whispered, squeezing her arm. Joffrey stood in the center of the throng, winding an ornate crossbow. Ser Boros and Ser Meryn were with him. The sight of them was enough to tie her insides in knots. "Your Grace." She fell to her knees. "Kneeling won't save you now," the king said. "Stand up. You're here to answer for your brother's latest treasons." "Your Grace, whatever my traitor brother has done, I had no part. You know that, I beg you, please—" "Get her up!" The Hound pulled her to her feet, not ungently. "Ser Lancel," Joff said, "tell her of this outrage." Sansa had always thought Lancel Lannister comely and well spoken, but there was neither pity nor kindness in the look he gave her. "Using some vile sorcery, your brother fell upon Ser Stafford Lannister with an army of wargs, not three days' ride from Lannisport. Thousands of good men were butchered as they slept, without the chance to lift sword. After the slaughter, the northmen feasted on the flesh of the slain." Horror coiled cold hands around Sansa's throat. "You have nothing to say?" asked Joffrey. "Your Grace, the poor child is shocked witless," murmured Ser Dontos. "Silence, fool." Joffrey lifted his crossbow and pointed it at her face. "You Starks are as unnatural as those wolves of yours. I've not forgotten how your monster savaged me." 259 "That was Arya's wolf," she said. "Lady never hurt you, but you killed her anyway." "No, your father did," Joff said, "but I killed your father. I wish I'd done it myself. I killed a man last night who was bigger than your father. They came to the gate shouting my name and calling for bread like I was some baker, but I taught them better. I shot the loudest one right through the throat." "And he died?" With the ugly iron head of the quarrel staring her in the face, it was hard to think what else to say. "Of course he died, he had my quarrel in his throat. There was a woman throwing rocks, I got her as well, but only in the arm." Frowning, he lowered the crossbow. "I'd shoot you too, but if I do Mother says they'd kill my uncle Jaime. Instead you'll just be punished and we'll send word to your brother about what will happen to you if he doesn't yield. Dog, hit her." "Let me beat her!" Ser Dontos shoved forward, tin armor clattering. He was armed with a "morningstar" whose head was a melon. My Florian. She could have kissed him, blotchy skin and broken veins and all. He trotted his broomstick around her, shouting "Traitor, traitor" and whacking her over the head with the melon. Sansa covered herself with her hands, staggering every time the fruit pounded her, her hair sticky by the second blow. People were laughing. The melon flew to pieces. Laugh, Joffrey, she prayed as the juice ran down her face and the front of her blue silk gown. Laugh and be satisfied. Joffrey did not so much as snigger. "Boros. Meryn." Ser Meryn Trant seized Dontos by the arm and flung him brusquely away. The red-faced fool went sprawling, broomstick, melon, and all. Ser Boros seized Sansa. "Leave her face," Joffrey commanded. "I like her pretty." Boros slammed a fist into Sansa's belly, driving the air out of her. When she doubled over, the knight grabbed her hair and drew his sword, and for one hideous instant she was certain he meant to open her throat. As he laid the flat of the blade across her thighs, she thought her legs might break from the force of the blow. Sansa screamed. Tears welled in her eyes. It will be over soon. She soon lost count of the blows. "Enough," she heard the Hound rasp. "No it isn't," the king replied. "Boros, make her naked." Boros shoved a meaty hand down the front of Sansa's bodice and gave a hard yank. The silk came tearing away, baring her to the waist. Sansa covered her breasts with her hands. She could hear sniggers, far off and cruel. "Beat her bloody," Joffrey said, "we'll see how her brother fancies—" "What is the meaning of this?" The Imp's voice cracked like a whip, and suddenly Sansa was free. She stumbled to her knees, arms crossed over her chest, her breath ragged. "Is this your notion of chivalry, Ser Boros?" Tyrion Lannister demanded angrily. His pet sellsword stood with him, and one of his wildlings, the one with the burned eye. "What sort of knight beats helpless maids?" "The sort who serves his king, Imp." Ser Boros raised his sword, and Ser Meryn stepped up beside him, his blade scraping clear of its scabbard. "Careful with those," warned the dwarf's sellsword. "You don't want to get blood all over those pretty white cloaks." "Someone give the girl something to cover herself with," the Imp said. Sandor Clegane unfastened his cloak and tossed it at her. Sansa clutched it against her chest, fists bunched 260 hard in the white wool. The coarse weave was scratchy against her skin, but no velvet had ever felt so fine. "This girl's to be your queen," the Imp told Joffrey. "Have you no regard for her honor?" "I'm punishing her." "For what crime? She did not fight her brother's battle." "She has the blood of a wolf." "And you have the wits of a goose." "You can't talk to me that way. The king can do as he likes." "Aerys Targaryen did as he liked. Has your mother ever told you what happened to him?" Ser Boros Blount harrumphed. "No man threatens His Grace in the presence of the Kingsguard." Tyrion Lannister raised an eyebrow. "I am not threatening the king, ser, I am educating my nephew. Bronn, Timett, the next time Ser Boros opens his mouth, kill him." The dwarf smiled. "Now that was a threat, ser. See the difference?" Ser Boros turned a dark shade of red. "The queen will hear of this!" "No doubt she will. And why wait? Joffrey, shall we send for your mother?" The king flushed. "Nothing to say, Your Grace?" his uncle went on. "Good. Learn to use your ears more and your mouth less, or your reign will be shorter than I am. Wanton brutality is no way to win your people's love . . . or your queen's." "Fear is better than love, Mother says." Joffrey pointed at Sansa. "She fears me." The Imp sighed. "Yes, I see. A pity Stannis and Renly aren't twelve-year-old girls as well. Bronn, Timett, bring her." Sansa moved as if in a dream. She thought the Imp's men would take her back to her bedchamber in Maegor's Holdfast, but instead they conducted her to the Tower of the Hand. She had not set foot inside that place since the day her father fell from grace, and it made her feel faint to climb those steps again. Some serving girls took charge of her, mouthing meaningless comforts to stop her shaking. One stripped off the ruins of her gown and smallclothes, and another bathed her and washed the sticky juice from her face and her hair. As they scrubbed her down with soap and sluiced warm water over her head, all she could see were the faces from the bailey. Knights are sworn to defend the weak, protect women, and fight for the right, but none of them did a thing. Only Ser Dontos had tried to help, and he was no longer a knight, no more than the Imp was, nor the Hound . . . the Hound hated knights . . . I hate them too, Sansa thought. They are no true knights, not one of them. After she was clean, plump ginger-headed Maester Frenken came to see her. He bid her lie facedown on the mattress while he spread a salve across the angry red welts that covered the backs of her legs. Afterward he mixed her a draught of dreamwine, with some honey so it might go down easier. "Sleep a bit, child. When you wake, all this will seem a bad dream." No it won't, you stupid man, Sansa thought, but she drank the dreamwine anyway, and slept. It was dark when she woke again, not quite knowing where she was, the room both strange and strangely familiar. As she rose, a stab of pain went through her legs and brought it 261 all back. Tears filled her eyes. Someone had laid out a robe for her beside the bed. Sansa slipped it on and opened the door. Outside stood a hard-faced woman with leathery brown skin, three necklaces looped about her scrawny neck. One was gold and one was silver and one was made of human ears. "Where does she think she's going?" the woman asked, leaning on a tall spear. "The godswood." She had to find Ser Dontos, beg him to take her home now before it was too late. "The halfman said you're not to leave," the woman said. "Pray here, the gods will hear." Meekly, Sansa dropped her eyes and retreated back inside. She realized suddenly why this place seemed so familiar. They've put me in Arya's old bedchamber, from when Father was the Hand of the King. All her things are gone and the furnishings have been moved around, but it's the same . . . A short time later, a serving girl brought a platter of cheese and bread and olives, with a flagon of cold water. "Take it away," Sansa commanded, but the girl left the food on a table. She was thirsty, she realized. Every step sent knives through her thighs, but she made herself cross the room. She drank two cups of water, and was nibbling on an olive when the knock came. Anxiously, she turned toward the door, smoothed down the folds of her robe. "Yes?" The door opened, and Tyrion Lannister stepped inside. "My lady. I trust I am not disturbing you?" "Am I your prisoner?" "My guest." He was wearing his chain of office, a necklace of linked golden hands. "I thought we might talk." "As my lord commands." Sansa found it hard not to stare; his face was so ugly it held a queer fascination for her. "The food and garments are to your satisfaction?" he asked. "If there is anything else you need, you have only to ask." "You are most kind. And this morning . . . it was very good of you to help me." "You have a right to know why Joffrey was so wroth. Six nights gone, your brother fell upon my uncle Stafford, encamped with his host at a village called Oxcross not three days' ride from Casterly Rock. Your northerners won a crushing victory. We received word only this morning." Robb will kill you all, she thought, exulting. "It's . . . terrible, my lord. My brother is a vile traitor." The dwarf smiled wanly. "Well, he's no fawn, he's made that clear enough." "Ser Lancel said Robb led an army of wargs . . ." The Imp gave a disdainful bark of laughter. "Ser Lancel's a wineskin warrior who wouldn't know a warg from a wart. Your brother had his direwolf with him, but I suspect that's as far as it went. The northmen crept into my uncle's camp and cut his horse lines, and Lord Stark sent his wolf among them. Even war-trained destriers went mad. Knights were trampled to death in their pavilions, and the rabble woke in terror and fled, casting aside their weapons to run the faster. Ser Stafford was slain as he chased after a horse. Lord Rickard Karstark drove a lance through his chest. Ser Rubert Brax is also dead, along with Ser Lymond Vikary, Lord Crakehall, and Lord Jast. Half a hundred more have been taken captive, including Jast's sons and my nephew Martyn Lannister. Those who survived are spreading wild tales and swearing that the old gods of the north march with your brother." 262 "Then . . . there was no sorcery?" Lannister snorted. "Sorcery is the sauce fools spoon over failure to hide the flavor of their own incompetence. My mutton-headed uncle had not even troubled to post sentries, it would seem. His host was raw—apprentice boys, miners, field hands, fisherfolk, the sweepings of Lannisport. The only mystery is how your brother reached him. Our forces still hold the stronghold at the Golden Tooth, and they swear he did not pass." The dwarf gave an irritated shrug. "Well, Robb Stark is my father's bane. Joffrey is mine. Tell me, what do you feel for my kingly nephew?" "I love him with all my heart," Sansa said at once. "Truly?" He did not sound convinced. "Even now?" "My love for His Grace is greater than it has ever been." The Imp laughed aloud. "Well, someone has taught you to lie well. You may be grateful for that one day, child. You are a child still, are you not? Or have you flowered?" Sansa blushed. It was a rude question, but the shame of being stripped before half the castle made it seem like nothing. "No, my lord." "That's all to the good. If it gives you any solace, I do not intend that you ever wed Joffrey. No marriage will reconcile Stark and Lannister after all that has happened, I fear. More's the pity. The match was one of King Robert's better notions, if Joffrey hadn't mucked it up." She knew she ought to say something, but the words caught in her throat. "You grow very quiet," Tyrion Lannister observed. "Is this what you want? An end to your betrothal?" "I . . ." Sansa did not know what to say. Is it a trick? Will he punish me if I tell the truth? She stared at the dwarf's brutal bulging brow, the hard black eye and the shrewd green one, the crooked teeth and wiry beard. "I only want to be loyal." "Loyal," the dwarf mused, "and far from any Lannisters. I can scarce blame you for that. When I was your age, I wanted the same thing." He smiled. "They tell me you visit the godswood every day. What do you pray for, Sansa?" I pray for Robb's victory and Joffrey's death . . . and for home. For Winterfell. "I pray for an end to the fighting." "We'll have that soon enough. There will be another battle, between your brother Robb and my lord father, and that will settle the issue." Robb will beat him, Sansa thought. He beat your uncle and your brother Jaime, he'll beat your father too. It was as if her face were an open book, so easily did the dwarf read her hopes. "Do not take Oxcross too much to heart, my lady," he told her, not unkindly. "A battle is not a war, and my lord father is assuredly not my uncle Stafford. The next time you visit the godswood, pray that your brother has the wisdom to bend the knee. Once the north returns to the king's peace, I mean to send you home." He hopped down off the window seat and said, "You may sleep here tonight. I'll give you some of my own men as a guard, some Stone Crows perhaps—" "No," Sansa blurted out, aghast. If she was locked in the Tower of the Hand, guarded by the dwarf's men, how would Ser Dontos ever spirit her away to freedom? "Would you prefer Black Ears? I'll give you Chella if a woman would make you more at ease." 263 "Please, no, my lord, the wildlings frighten me." He grinned. "Me as well. But more to the point, they frighten Joffrey and that nest of sly vipers and lickspittle dogs he calls a Kingsguard. With Chella or Timett by your side, no one would dare offer you harm." "I would sooner return to my own bed." A lie came to her suddenly, but it seemed so right that she blurted it out at once. "This tower was where my father's men were slain. Their ghosts would give me terrible dreams, and I would see their blood wherever I looked." Tyrion Lannister studied her face. "I am no stranger to nightmares, Sansa. Perhaps you are wiser than I knew. Permit me at least to escort you safely back to your own chambers." CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE CATELYN It was full dark before they found the village. Catelyn found herself wondering if the place had a name. If so, its people had taken that knowledge with them when they fled, along with all they owned, down to the candles in the sept. Ser Wendel lit a torch and led her through the low door. Within, the seven walls were cracked and crooked. God is one, Septon Osmynd had taught her when she was a girl, with seven aspects, as the sept is a single building, with seven walls. The wealthy septs of the cities had statues of the Seven and an altar to each. In Winterfell, Septon Chayle hung carved masks from each wall. Here Catelyn found only rough charcoal drawings. Ser Wendel set the torch in a sconce near the door, and left to wait outside with Robar Royce. Catelyn studied the faces. The Father was bearded, as ever. The Mother smiled, loving and protective. The Warrior had his sword sketched in beneath his face, the Smith his hammer. The Maid was beautiful, the Crone wizened and wise. And the seventh face . . . the Stranger was neither male nor female, yet both, ever the outcast, the wanderer from far places, less and more than human, unknown and unknowable. Here the face was a black oval, a shadow with stars for eyes. It made Catelyn uneasy. She would get scant comfort there. She knelt before the Mother. "My lady, look down on this battle with a mother's eyes. They are all sons, every one. Spare them if you can, and spare my own sons as well. Watch over Robb and Bran and Rickon. Would that I were with them." A crack ran down through the Mother's left eye. It made her look as if she were crying. Catelyn could hear Ser Wendel's booming voice, and now and again Ser Robar's quiet answers, as they talked of the coming battle. Otherwise the night was still. Not even a cricket could be heard, and the gods kept their silence. Did your old gods ever answer you, Ned? she wondered. When you knelt before your heart tree, did they hear you? Flickering torchlight danced across the walls, making the faces seem half alive, twisting them, changing them. The statues in the great septs of the cities wore the faces the stonemasons had given them, but these charcoal scratchings were so crude they might be anyone. The Father's face made her think of her own father, dying in his bed at Riverrun. The Warrior was Renly and Stannis, Robb and Robert, Jaime Lannister and Jon Snow. She even glimpsed Arya in those lines, just for an instant. Then a gust of wind through the door made the torch sputter, and the semblance was gone, washed away in orange glare. The smoke was making her eyes burn. She rubbed at them with the heels of her scarred hands. When she looked up at the Mother again, it was her own mother she saw. Lady Minisa 264 Tully had died in childbed, trying to give Lord Hoster a second son. The baby had perished with her, and afterward some of the life had gone out of Father. She was always so calm, Catelyn thought, remembering her mother's soft hands, her warm smile. If she had lived, how different our lives might have been. She wondered what Lady Minisa would make of her eldest daughter, kneeling here before her. I have come so many thousands of leagues, and for what? Who have I served? I have lost my daughters, Robb does not want me, and Bran and Rickon must surely think me a cold and unnatural mother. I was not even with Ned when he died . . . Her head swam, and the sept seemed to move around her. The shadows swayed and shifted, furtive animals racing across the cracked white walls. Catelyn had not eaten today. Perhaps that had been unwise. She told herself that there had been no time, but the truth was that food had lost its savor in a world without Ned. When they took his head off, they killed me too. Behind her the torch spit, and suddenly it seemed to her that it was her sister's face on the wall, though the eyes were harder than she recalled, not Lysa's eyes but Cersei's. Cersei is a mother too. No matter who fathered those children, she felt them kick inside her, brought them forth with her pain and blood, nursed them at her breast. If they are truly Jaime's . . . "Does Cersei pray to you too, my lady?" Catelyn asked the Mother. She could see the proud, cold, lovely features of the Lannister queen etched upon the wall. The crack was still there; even Cersei could weep for her children. "Each of the Seven embodies all of the Seven," Septon Osmynd had told her once. There was as much beauty in the Crone as in the Maiden, and the Mother could be fiercer than the Warrior when her children were in danger. Yes . . . She had seen enough of Robert Baratheon at Winterfell to know that the king did not regard Joffrey with any great warmth. If the boy was truly Jaime's seed, Robert would have put him to death along with his mother, and few would have condemned him. Bastards were common enough, but incest was a monstrous sin to both old gods and new, and the children of such wickedness were named abominations in sept and godswood alike. The dragon kings had wed brother to sister, but they were the blood of old Valyria where such practices had been common, and like their dragons the Targaryens answered to neither gods nor men. Ned must have known, and Lord Arryn before him. Small wonder that the queen had killed them both. Would I do any less for my own? Catelyn clenched her hands, feeling the tightness in her scarred fingers where the assassin's steel had cut to the bone as she fought to save her son. "Bran knows too," she whispered, lowering her head. Gods be good, he must have seen something, heard something, that was why they tried to kill him in his bed. Lost and weary, Catelyn Stark gave herself over to her gods. She knelt before the Smith, who fixed things that were broken, and asked that he give her sweet Bran his protection. She went to the Maid and beseeched her to lend her courage to Arya and Sansa, to guard them in their innocence. To the Father, she prayed for justice, the strength to seek it and the wisdom to know it, and she asked the Warrior to keep Robb strong and shield him in his battles. Lastly she turned to the Crone, whose statues often showed her with a lamp in one hand. "Guide me, wise lady," she prayed. "Show me the path I must walk, and do not let me stumble in the dark places that lie ahead." Finally there were footsteps behind her, and a noise at the door. "My lady," Ser Robar said gently, "pardon, but our time is at an end. We must be back before the dawn breaks." Catelyn rose stiffly. Her knees ached, and she would have given much for a featherbed and a pillow just then. "Thank you, ser. I am ready." 265 They rode in silence through sparse woodland where the trees leaned drunkenly away from the sea. The nervous whinny of horses and the clank of steel guided them back to Renly's camp. The long ranks of man and horse were armored in darkness, as black as if the Smith had hammered night itself into steel. There were banners to her right, banners to her left, and rank on rank of banners before her, but in the predawn gloom, neither colors nor sigils could be discerned. A grey army, Catelyn thought. Grey men on grey horses beneath grey banners. As they sat their horses waiting, Renly's shadow knights pointed their lances upward, so she rode through a forest of tall naked trees, bereft of leaves and life. Where Storm's End stood was only a deeper darkness, a wall of black through which no stars could shine, but she could see torches moving across the fields where Lord Stannis had made his camp. The candles within Renly's pavilion made the shimmering silken walls seem to glow, transforming the great tent into a magical castle alive with emerald light. Two of the Rainbow Guard stood sentry at the door to the royal pavilion. The green light shone strangely against the purple plums of Ser Parmen's surcoat, and gave a sickly hue to the sunflowers that covered every inch of Ser Emmon's enameled yellow plate. Long silken plumes flew from their helms, and rainbow cloaks draped their shoulders. Within, Catelyn found Brienne armoring the king for battle while the Lords Tarly and Rowan spoke of dispositions and tactics. It was pleasantly warm inside, the heat shimmering off the coals in a dozen small iron braziers. "I must speak with you, Your Grace," she said, granting him a king's style for once, anything to make him heed her. "In a moment, Lady Catelyn," Renly replied. Brienne fit backplate to breastplate over his quilted tunic. The king's armor was a deep green, the green of leaves in a summer wood, so dark it drank the candlelight. Gold highlights gleamed from inlay and fastenings like distant fires in that wood, winking every time he moved. "Pray continue, Lord Mathis." "Your Grace," Mathis Rowan said with a sideways glance at Catelyn. "As I was saying, our battles are well drawn up. Why wait for daybreak? Sound the advance." "And have it said that I won by treachery, with an unchivalrous attack? Dawn was the chosen hour." "Chosen by Stannis," Randyll Tarly pointed out. "He'd have us charge into the teeth of the rising sun. We'll be half-blind." "Only until first shock," Renly said confidently. "Ser Loras will break them, and after that it will be chaos." Brienne tightened green leather straps and buckled golden buckles. "When my brother falls, see that no insult is done to his corpse. He is my own blood, I will not have his head paraded about on a spear." "And if he yields?" Lord Tarly asked. "Yields?" Lord Rowan laughed. "When Mace Tyrell laid siege to Storm's End, Stannis ate rats rather than open his gates." "Well I remember." Renly lifted his chin to allow Brienne to fasten his gorget in place. "Near the end, Ser Gawen Wylde and three of his knights tried to steal out a postern gate to surrender. Stannis caught them and ordered them flung from the walls with catapults. I can still see Gawen's face as they strapped him down. He had been our master-at-arms." Lord Rowan appeared puzzled. "No men were hurled from the walls. I would surely remember that." "Maester Cressen told Stannis that we might be forced to eat our dead, and there was no gain in flinging away good meat." Renly pushed back his hair. Brienne bound it with a velvet tie and pulled a padded cap down over his ears, to cushion the weight of his helm. "Thanks to 266 the Onion Knight we were never reduced to dining on corpses, but it was a close thing. Too close for Ser Gawen, who died in his cell." "Your Grace." Catelyn had waited patiently, but time grew short. "You promised me a word." Renly nodded. "See to your battles, my lords . . . oh, and if Barristan Selmy is at my brother's side, I want him spared." "There's been no word of Ser Barristan since Joffrey cast him out," Lord Rowan objected. "I know that old man. He needs a king to guard, or who is he? Yet he never came to me, and Lady Catelyn says he is not with Robb Stark at Riverrun. Where else but with Stannis?" "As you say, Your Grace. No harm will come to him." The lords bowed deeply and departed. "Say your say, Lady Stark," Renly said. Brienne swept his cloak over his broad shoulders. It was cloth-of-gold, heavy, with the crowned stag of Baratheon picked out in flakes of jet. "The Lannisters tried to kill my son Bran. A thousand times I have asked myself why. Your brother gave me my answer. There was a hunt the day he fell. Robert and Ned and most of the other men rode out after boar, but Jaime Lannister remained at Winterfell, as did the queen." Renly was not slow to take the implication. "So you believe the boy caught them at their incest . . ." "I beg you, my lord, grant me leave to go to your brother Stannis and tell him what I suspect." "To what end?" "Robb will set aside his crown if you and your brother will do the same," she said, hoping it was true. She would make it true if she must; Robb would listen to her, even if his lords would not. "Let the three of you call for a Great Council, such as the realm has not seen for a hundred years. We will send to Winterfell, so Bran may tell his tale and all men may know the Lannisters for the true usurpers. Let the assembled lords of the Seven Kingdoms choose who shall rule them." Renly laughed. "Tell me, my lady, do direwolves vote on who should lead the pack?" Brienne brought the king's gauntlets and greathelm, crowned with golden antlers that would add a foot and a half to his height. "The time for talk is done. Now we see who is stronger." Renly pulled a lobstered green-and-gold gauntlet over his left hand, while Brienne knelt to buckle on his belt, heavy with the weight of longsword and dagger. "I beg you in the name of the Mother," Catelyn began when a sudden gust of wind flung open the door of the tent. She thought she glimpsed movement, but when she turned her head, it was only the king's shadow shifting against the silken walls. She heard Renly begin a jest, his shadow moving, lifting its sword, black on green, candles guttering, shivering, something was queer, wrong, and then she saw Renly's sword still in its scabbard, sheathed still, but the shadowsword . . . "Cold," said Renly in a small puzzled voice, a heartbeat before the steel of his gorget parted like cheesecloth beneath the shadow of a blade that was not there. He had time to make a small thick gasp before the blood came gushing out of his throat. "Your Gr—no!" cried Brienne the Blue when she saw that evil flow, sounding as scared as any little girl. The king stumbled into her arms, a sheet of blood creeping down the front of 267 his armor, a dark red tide that drowned his green and gold. More candles guttered out. Renly tried to speak, but he was choking on his own blood. His legs collapsed, and only Brienne's strength held him up. She threw back her head and screamed, wordless in her anguish. The shadow. Something dark and evil had happened here, she knew, something that she could not begin to understand. Renly never cast that shadow. Death came in that door and blew the life out of him as swift as the wind snuffed out his candles. Only a few instants passed before Robar Royce and Emmon Cuy came bursting in, though it felt like half the night. A pair of men-at-arms crowded in behind with torches. When they saw Renly in Brienne's arms, and her drenched with the king's blood, Ser Robar gave a cry of horror. "Wicked woman!" screamed Ser Emmon, he of the sun-flowered steel. "Away from him, you vile creature!" "Gods be good, Brienne, why?" asked Ser Robar. Brienne looked up from her king's body. The rainbow cloak that hung from her shoulders had turned red where the king's blood had soaked into the cloth. "I . . . I . . ." "You'll die for this." Ser Emmon snatched up a long-handled battleaxe from the weapons piled near the door. "You'll pay for the king's life with your own!" "NO!" Catelyn Stark screamed, finding her voice at last, but it was too late, the blood madness was on them, and they rushed forward with shouts that drowned her softer words. Brienne moved faster than Catelyn would have believed. Her own sword was not to hand, so she snatched Renly's from its scabbard and raised it to catch Emmon's axe on the downswing. A spark flashed blue-white as steel met steel with a rending crash, and Brienne sprang to her feet, the body of the dead king thrust rudely aside. Ser Emmon stumbled over it as he tried to close, and Brienne's blade sheared through the wooden haft to send his axehead spinning. Another man thrust a flaming torch at her back, but the rainbow cloak was too sodden with blood to burn. Brienne spun and cut, and torch and hand went flying. Flames crept across the carpet. The maimed man began to scream. Ser Emmon dropped the axe and fumbled for his sword. The second man-at-arms lunged, Brienne parried, and their swords danced and clanged against each other. When Emmon Cuy came wading back in, Brienne was forced to retreat, yet somehow she held them both at bay. On the ground, Renly's head rolled sickeningly to one side, and a second mouth yawned wide, the blood coming from him now in slow pulses. Ser Robar had hung back, uncertain, but now he was reaching for his hilt. "Robar, no, listen." Catelyn seized his arm. "You do her wrong, it was not her. Help her! Hear me, it was Stannis." The name was on her lips before she could think how it got there, but as she said it, she knew that it was true. "I swear it, you know me, it was Stannis killed him." The young rainbow knight stared at this madwoman with pale and frightened eyes. "Stannis? How?" "I do not know. Sorcery, some dark magic, there was a shadow, a shadow." Her own voice sounded wild and crazed to her, but the words poured out in a rush as the blades continued to clash behind her. "A shadow with a sword, I swear it, I saw. Are you blind, the girl loved him! Help her!" She glanced back, saw the second guardsman fall, his blade dropping from limp fingers. Outside there was shouting. More angry men would be bursting in on them any instant, she knew. "She is innocent, Robar. You have my word, on my husband's grave and my honor as a Stark!" That resolved him. "I will hold them," Ser Robar said. "Get her away." He turned and went out. 268 The fire had reached the wall and was creeping up the side of the tent. Ser Emmon was pressing Brienne hard, him in his enameled yellow steel and her in wool. He had forgotten Catelyn, until the iron brazier came crashing into the back of his head. Helmed as he was, the blow did no lasting harm, but it sent him to his knees. "Brienne, with me," Catelyn commanded. The girl was not slow to see the chance. A slash, and the green silk parted. They stepped out into darkness and the chill of dawn. Loud voices came from the other side of the pavilion. "This way," Catelyn urged, "and slowly. We must not run, or they will ask why. Walk easy, as if nothing were amiss." Brienne thrust her sword blade through her belt and fell in beside Catelyn. The night air smelled of rain. Behind them, the king's pavilion was well ablaze, flames rising high against the dark. No one made any move to stop them. Men rushed past them, shouting of fire and murder and sorcery. Others stood in small groups and spoke in low voices. A few were praying, and one young squire was on his knees, sobbing openly. Renly's battles were already coming apart as the rumors spread from mouth to mouth. The nightfires had burned low, and as the east began to lighten the immense mass of Storm's End emerged like a dream of stone while wisps of pale mist raced across the field, flying from the sun on wings of wind. Morning ghosts, she had heard Old Nan call them once, spirits returning to their graves. And Renly one of them now, gone like his brother Robert, like her own dear Ned. "I never held him but as he died," Brienne said quietly as they walked through the spreading chaos. Her voice sounded as if she might break at any instant. "He was laughing one moment, and suddenly the blood was everywhere . . . my lady, I do not understand. Did you see, did you . . . ?" "I saw a shadow. I thought it was Renly's shadow at the first, but it was his brother's." "Lord Stannis?" "I felt him. It makes no sense, I know . . ." It made sense enough for Brienne. "I will kill him," the tall homely girl declared. "With my lord's own sword, I will kill him. I swear it. I swear it. I swear it." Hal Mollen and the rest of her escort were waiting with the horses. Ser Wendel Manderly was all in a lather to know what was happening. "My lady, the camp has gone mad," he blurted when he saw them. "Lord Renly, is he—" He stopped suddenly, staring at Brienne and the blood that drenched her. "Dead, but not by our hands." "The battle—" Hal Mollen began. "There will be no battle." Catelyn mounted, and her escort formed up about her, with Ser Wendel to her left and Ser Perwyn Frey on her right. "Brienne, we brought mounts enough for twice our number. Choose one, and come with us." "I have my own horse, my lady. And my armor—" "Leave them. We must be well away before they think to look for us. We were both with the king when he was killed. That will not be forgotten." Wordless, Brienne turned and did as she was bid. "Ride," Catelyn commanded her escort when they were all ahorse. "If any man tries to stop us, cut him down." As the long fingers of dawn fanned across the fields, color was returning to the world. Where grey men had sat grey horses armed with shadow spears, the points of ten thousand lances now glinted silverly cold, and on the myriad flapping banners Catelyn saw the blush of red and pink and orange, the richness of blues and browns, the blaze of gold and yellow. All 269 the power of Storm's End and Highgarden, the power that had been Renly's an hour ago. They belong to Stannis now, she realized, even if they do not know it themselves yet. Where else are they to turn, if not to the last Baratheon? Stannis has won all with a single evil stroke. I am the rightful king, he had declared, his jaw clenched hard as iron, and your son no less a traitor than my brother here. His day will come as well. A chill went through her. CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR JON The hill jutted above the dense tangle of forest, rising solitary and sudden, its windswept heights visible from miles off. The wildlings called it the Fist of the First Men, rangers said. It did look like a fist, Jon Snow thought, punching up through earth and wood, its bare brown slopes knuckled with stone. He rode to the top with Lord Mormont and the officers, leaving Ghost below under the trees. The direwolf had run off three times as they climbed, twice returning reluctantly to Jon's whistle. The third time, the Lord Commander lost patience and snapped, "Let him go, boy. I want to reach the crest before dusk. Find the wolf later." The way up was steep and stony, the summit crowned by a chest-high wall of tumbled rocks. They had to circle some distance west before they found a gap large enough to admit the horses. "This is good ground, Thoren," the Old Bear proclaimed when at last they attained the top. "We could scarce hope for better. We'll make our camp here to await Halfhand." The Lord Commander swung down off his saddle, dislodging the raven from his shoulder. Complaining loudly, the bird took to the air. The views atop the hill were bracing, yet it was the ringwall that drew Jon's eye, the weathered grey stones with their white patches of lichen, their beards of green moss. It was said that the Fist had been a ringfort of the First Men in the Dawn Age. "An old place, and strong," Thoren Smallwood said. "Old," Mormont's raven screamed as it flapped in noisy circles about their heads. "Old, old, old." "Quiet," Mormont growled up at the bird. The Old Bear was too proud to admit to weakness, but Jon was not deceived. The strain of keeping up with younger men was taking its toll. "These heights will be easy to defend, if need be," Thoren pointed out as he walked his horse along the ring of stones, his sable-trimmed cloak stirring in the wind. "Yes, this place will do." The Old Bear lifted a hand to the wind, and the raven landed on his forearm, claws scrabbling against his black ringmail. "What about water, my lord?" Jon wondered. "We crossed a brook at the foot of the hill." "A long climb for a drink," Jon pointed out, "and outside the ring of stones." Thoren said, "Are you too lazy to climb a hill, boy?" When Lord Mormont said, "We're not like to find another place as strong. We'll carry water, and make certain we are well supplied," Jon knew better than to argue. So the command was given, and the brothers of the Night's Watch raised their camp behind the stone ring the First Men had made. Black tents sprouted like mushrooms after a rain, and blankets 270 and bedrolls covered the bare ground. Stewards tethered the garrons in long lines, and saw them fed and watered. Foresters took their axes to the trees in the waning afternoon light to harvest enough wood to see them through the night. A score of builders set to clearing brush, digging latrines, and untying their bundles of fire-hardened stakes. "I will have every opening in the ringwall ditched and staked before dark," the Old Bear had commanded. Once he'd put up the Lord Commander's tent and seen to their horses, Jon Snow descended the hill in search of Ghost. The direwolf came at once, all in silence. One moment Jon was striding beneath the trees, whistling and shouting, alone in the green, pinecones and fallen leaves under his feet; the next, the great white direwolf was walking beside him, pale as morning mist. But when they reached the ringfort, Ghost balked again. He padded forward warily to sniff at the gap in the stones, and then retreated, as if he did not like what he'd smelled. Jon tried to grab him by the scruff of his neck and haul him bodily inside the ring, no easy task; the wolf weighed as much as he did, and was stronger by far. "Ghost, what's wrong with you?" It was not like him to be so unsettled. In the end Jon had to give it up. "As you will," he told the wolf. "Go, hunt." The red eyes watched him as he made his way back through the mossy stones. They ought to be safe here. The hill offered commanding views, and the slopes were precipitous to the north and west and only slightly more gentle to the east. Yet as the dusk deepened and darkness seeped into the hollows between the trees, Jon's sense of foreboding grew. This is the haunted forest, he told himself. Maybe there are ghosts here, the spirits of the First Men. This was their place, once. "Stop acting the boy," he told himself. Clambering atop the piled rocks, Jon gazed off toward the setting sun. He could see the light shimmering like hammered gold off the surface of the Milkwater as it curved away to the south. Upriver the land was more rugged, the dense forest giving way to a series of bare stony hills that rose high and wild to the north and west. On the horizon stood the mountains like a great shadow, range on range of them receding into the blue-grey distance, their jagged peaks sheathed eternally in snow. Even from afar they looked vast and cold and inhospitable. Closer at hand, it was the trees that ruled. To south and east the wood went on as far as Jon could see, a vast tangle of root and limb painted in a thousand shades of green, with here and there a patch of red where a weirwood shouldered through the pines and sentinels, or a blush of yellow where some broadleafs had begun to turn. When the wind blew, he could hear the creak and groan of branches older than he was. A thousand leaves fluttered, and for a moment the forest seemed a deep green sea, storm-tossed and heaving, eternal and unknowable. Ghost was not like to be alone down there, he thought. Anything could be moving under that sea, creeping toward the ringfort through the dark of the wood, concealed beneath those trees. Anything. How would they ever know? He stood there for a long time, until the sun vanished behind the saw-toothed mountains and darkness began to creep through the forest. "Jon?" Samwell Tarly called up. "I thought it looked like you. Are you well?" "Well enough." Jon hopped down. "How did you fare today?" "Well. I fared well. Truly." Jon was not about to share his disquiet with his friend, not when Samwell Tarly was at last beginning to find his courage. "The Old Bear means to wait here for Qhorin Halfhand and the men from the Shadow Tower." 271 "It seems a strong place," said Sam. "A ringfort of the First Men. Do you think there were battles fought here?" "No doubt. You'd best get a bird ready. Mormont will want to send back word." "I wish I could send them all. They hate being caged." "You would too, if you could fly." "If I could fly, I'd be back at Castle Black eating a pork pie," said Sam. Jon clapped him on the shoulder with his burned hand. They walked back through the camp together. Cookfires were being lit all around them. Overhead, the stars were coming out. The long red tail of Mormont's Torch burned as bright as the moon. Jon heard the ravens before he saw them. Some were calling his name. The birds were not shy when it came to making noise. They feel it too. "I'd best see to the Old Bear," he said. "He gets noisy when he isn't fed as well." He found Mormont talking with Thoren Smallwood and half a dozen other officers. "There you are," the old man said gruffly. "Bring us some hot wine, if you would. The night is chilly." "Yes, my lord." Jon built a cookfire, claimed a small cask of Mormont's favorite robust red from stores, and poured it into a kettle. He hung the kettle above the flames while he gathered the rest of his ingredients. The Old Bear was particular about his hot spiced wine. So much cinnamon and so much nutmeg and so much honey, not a drop more. Raisins and nuts and dried berries, but no lemon, that was the rankest sort of southron heresy—which was queer, since he always took lemon in his morning beer. The drink must be hot to warm a man properly, the Lord Commander insisted, but the wine must never be allowed to come to a boil. Jon kept a careful eye on the kettle. As he worked, he could hear the voices from inside the tent. Jarman Buckwell said, "The easiest road up into the Frostfangs is to follow the Milkwater back to its source. Yet if we go that path, Rayder will know of our approach, certain as sunrise." "The Giant's Stair might serve," said Ser Mallador Locke, "or the Skirling Pass, if it's clear." The wine was steaming. Jon lifted the kettle off the fire, filled eight cups, and carried them into the tent. The Old Bear was peering at the crude map Sam had drawn him that night back in Craster's Keep. He took a cup from Jon's tray, tried a swallow of wine, and gave a brusque nod of approval. His raven hopped down his arm. "Corn," it said. "Corn. Corn." Ser Ottyn Wythers waved the wine away. "I would not go into the mountains at all," he said in a thin, tired voice. "The Frostfangs have a cruel bite even in summer, and now . . . if we should be caught by a storm . . ." "I do not mean to risk the Frostfangs unless I must," said Mormont. "Wildlings can no more live on snow and stone than we can. They will emerge from the heights soon, and for a host of any size, the only route is along the Milkwater. If so, we are strongly placed here. They cannot hope to slip by us." "They may not wish to. They are thousands, and we will be three hundred when the Halfhand reaches us." Ser Mallador accepted a cup from Jon. "If it comes to battle, we could not hope for better ground than here," declared Mormont. "We'll strengthen the defenses. Pits and spikes, caltrops scattered on the slopes, every breach mended. Jarman, I'll want your sharpest eyes as watchers. A ring of them, all around us and along the river, to warn of any approach. Hide them up in trees. And we had best start 272 bringing up water too, more than we need. We'll dig cisterns. It will keep the men occupied, and may prove needful later." "My rangers—" started Thoren Smallwood. "Your rangers will limit their ranging to this side of the river until the Halfhand reaches us. After that, we'll see. I will not lose more of my men." "Mance Rayder might be massing his host a day's ride from here, and we'd never know," Smallwood complained. "We know where the wildlings are massing," Mormont came back. "We had it from Craster. I mislike the man, but I do not think he lied to us in this." "As you say." Smallwood took a sullen leave. The others finished their wine and followed, more courteously. "Shall I bring you supper, my lord?" Jon asked. "Corn," the raven cried. Mormont did not answer at once. When he did he said only, "Did your wolf find game today?" "He's not back yet." "We could do with fresh meat." Mormont dug into a sack and offered his raven a handful of corn. "You think I'm wrong to keep the rangers close?" "That's not for me to say, my lord." "It is if you're asked." "If the rangers must stay in sight of the Fist, I don't see how they can hope to find my uncle," Jon admitted. "They can't." The raven pecked at the kernels in the Old Bear's palm. "Two hundred men or ten thousand, the country is too vast." The corn gone, Mormont turned his hand over. "You would not give up the search?" "Maester Aemon thinks you clever." Mormont moved the raven to his shoulder. The bird tilted its head to one side, little eyes aglitter. The answer was there. "Is it . . . it seems to me that it might be easier for one man to find two hundred than for two hundred to find one." The raven gave a cackling scream, but the Old Bear smiled through the grey of his beard. "This many men and horses leave a trail even Aemon could follow. On this hill, our fires ought to be visible as far off as the foothills of the Frostfangs. If Ben Stark is alive and free, he will come to us, I have no doubt." "Yes," said Jon, "but . . . what if . . ." ". . . he's dead?" Mormont asked, not unkindly. Jon nodded, reluctantly. "Dead," the raven said. "Dead. Dead." "He may come to us anyway," the Old Bear said. "As Othor did, and Jafer Flowers. I dread that as much as you, Jon, but we must admit the possibility." "Dead," his raven cawed, ruffling its wings. Its voice grew louder and more shrill. "Dead." Mormont stroked the bird's black feathers, and stifled a sudden yawn with the back of his hand. "I will forsake supper, I believe. Rest will serve me better. Wake me at first light." 273 "Sleep well, my lord." Jon gathered up the empty cups and stepped outside. He heard distant laughter, the plaintive sound of pipes. A great blaze was crackling in the center of the camp, and he could smell stew cooking. The Old Bear might not be hungry, but Jon was. He drifted over toward the fire. Dywen was holding forth, spoon in hand. "I know this wood as well as any man alive, and I tell you, I wouldn't care to ride through it alone tonight. Can't you smell it?" Grenn was staring at him with wide eyes, but Dolorous Edd said, "All I smell is the shit of two hundred horses. And this stew. Which has a similar aroma, now that I come to sniff it." "I've got your similar aroma right here." Hake patted his dirk. Grumbling, he filled Jon's bowl from the kettle. The stew was thick with barley, carrot, and onion, with here and there a ragged shred of salt beef, softened in the cooking. "What is it you smell, Dywen?" asked Grenn. The forester sucked on his spoon a moment. He had taken out his teeth. His face was leathery and wrinkled, his hands gnarled as old roots. "Seems to me like it smells . . . well . . . cold." "Your head's as wooden as your teeth," Hake told him. "There's no smell to cold." There is, thought Jon, remembering the night in the Lord Commander's chambers. It smells like death. Suddenly he was not hungry anymore. He gave his stew to Grenn, who looked in need of an extra supper to warm him against the night. The wind was blowing briskly when he left. By morning, frost would cover the ground, and the tent ropes would be stiff and frozen. A few fingers of spiced wine sloshed in the bottom of the kettle. Jon fed fresh wood to the fire and put the kettle over the flames to reheat. He flexed his fingers as he waited, squeezing and spreading until the hand tingled. The first watch had taken up their stations around the perimeter of the camp. Torches flickered all along the ringwall. The night was moonless, but a thousand stars shone overhead. A sound rose out of the darkness, faint and distant, but unmistakable: the howling of wolves. Their voices rose and fell, a chilly song, and lonely. It made the hairs rise along the back of his neck. Across the fire, a pair of red eyes regarded him from the shadows. The light of the flames made them glow. "Ghost," Jon breathed, surprised. "So you came inside after all, eh?" The white wolf often hunted all night; he had not expected to see him again till daybreak. "Was the hunting so bad?" he asked. "Here. To me, Ghost." The direwolf circled the fire, sniffing Jon, sniffing the wind, never still. It did not seem as if he were after meat right now. When the dead came walking, Ghost knew. He woke me, warned me. Alarmed, he got to his feet. "Is something out there? Ghost, do you have a scent?" Dywen said he smelled cold. The direwolf loped off, stopped, looked back. He wants me to follow. Pulling up the hood of his cloak, Jon walked away from the tents, away from the warmth of his fire, past the lines of shaggy little garrons. One of the horses whickered nervously when Ghost padded by. Jon soothed him with a word and paused to stroke his muzzle. He could hear the wind whistling through cracks in the rocks as they neared the ringwall. A voice called out a challenge. Jon stepped into the torchlight. "I need to fetch water for the Lord Commander." "Go on, then," the guard said. "Be quick about it." Huddled beneath his black cloak, with his hood drawn up against the wind, the man never even looked to see if he had a bucket. 274 Jon slipped sideways between two sharpened stakes while Ghost slid beneath them. A torch had been thrust down into a crevice, its flames flying pale orange banners when the gusts came. He snatched it up as he squeezed through the gap between the stones. Ghost went racing down the hill. Jon followed more slowly, the torch thrust out before him as he made his descent. The camp sounds faded behind him. The night was black, the slope steep, stony, and uneven. A moment's inattention would be a sure way to break an ankle . . . or his neck. What am I doing? he asked himself as he picked his way down. The trees stood beneath him, warriors armored in bark and leaf, deployed in their silent ranks awaiting the command to storm the hill. Black, they seemed . . . it was only when his torchlight brushed against them that Jon glimpsed a flash of green. Faintly, he heard the sound of water flowing over rocks. Ghost vanished in the underbrush. Jon struggled after him, listening to the call of the brook, to the leaves sighing in the wind. Branches clutched at his cloak, while overhead thick limbs twined together and shut out the stars. He found Ghost lapping from the stream. "Ghost," he called, "to me. Now." When the direwolf raised his head, his eyes glowed red and baleful, and water streamed down from his jaws like slaver. There was something fierce and terrible about him in that instant. And then he was off, bounding past Jon, racing through the trees. "Ghost, no, stay," he shouted, but the wolf paid no heed. The lean white shape was swallowed by the dark, and Jon had only two choices—to climb the hill again, alone, or to follow. He followed, angry, holding the torch out low so he could see the rocks that threatened to trip him with every step, the thick roots that seemed to grab at his feet, the holes where a man could twist an ankle. Every few feet he called again for Ghost, but the night wind was swirling amongst the trees and it drank the words. This is madness, he thought as he plunged deeper into the trees. He was about to turn back when he glimpsed a flash of white off ahead and to the right, back toward the hill. He jogged after it, cursing under his breath. A quarter-way around the Fist he chased the wolf before he lost him again. Finally he stopped to catch his breath amidst the scrub, thorns, and tumbled rocks at the base of the hill. Beyond the torchlight, the dark pressed close. A soft scrabbling noise made him turn. Jon moved toward the sound, stepping carefully among boulders and thornbushes. Behind a fallen tree, he came on Ghost again. The direwolf was digging furiously, kicking up dirt. "What have you found?" Jon lowered the torch, revealing a rounded mound of soft earth. A grave, he thought. But whose? He knelt, jammed the torch into the ground beside him. The soil was loose, sandy. Jon pulled it out by the fistful. There were no stones, no roots. Whatever was here had been put here recently. Two feet down, his fingers touched cloth. He had been expecting a corpse, fearing a corpse, but this was something else. He pushed against the fabric and felt small, hard shapes beneath, unyielding. There was no smell, no sign of graveworms. Ghost backed off and sat on his haunches, watching. Jon brushed the loose soil away to reveal a rounded bundle perhaps two feet across. He jammed his fingers down around the edges and worked it loose. When he pulled it free, whatever was inside shifted and clinked. Treasure, he thought, but the shapes were wrong to be coins, and the sound was wrong for metal. A length of frayed rope bound the bundle together. Jon unsheathed his dagger and cut it, groped for the edges of the cloth, and pulled. The bundle turned, and its contents spilled out onto the ground, glittering dark and bright. He saw a dozen knives, leaf-shaped spearheads, numerous arrowheads. Jon picked up a dagger blade, feather-light and shiny black, hiltless. Torchlight ran along its edge, a thin orange line that spoke of razor sharpness. Dragonglass. 275 What the maesters call obsidian. Had Ghost uncovered some ancient cache of the children of the forest, buried here for thousands of years? The Fist of the First Men was an old place, only . . . Beneath the dragonglass was an old warhorn, made from an auroch's horn and banded in bronze. Jon shook the dirt from inside it, and a stream of arrowheads fell out. He let them fall, and pulled up a corner of the cloth the weapons had been wrapped in, rubbing it between his fingers. Good wool, thick, a double weave, damp but not rotted. It could not have been long in the ground. And it was dark. He seized a handful and pulled it close to the torch. Not dark. Black. Even before Jon stood and shook it out, he knew what he had: the black cloak of a Sworn Brother of the Night's Watch.