George RR Martin - Ice and Fire 1 - Game of Thrones

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A Game of Thrones v1.0
Book One of A Song of Ice and Fire
By George R.R. Martin
Scanned 3/5/02 by sliph
PROLOGUE
"We should start back," Gared urged as the woods began to grow dark around
them. "The wildlings are dead."
"Do the dead frighten you?" Ser Waymar Royce asked with just the hint of a
smile.
Gared did not rise to the bait. He was an old man, past fifty, and he had seen
the lordlings come and go. "Dead is dead," he said. "We have no business with
the dead."
"Are they dead?" Royce asked softly. "What proof have we?"
"Will saw them," Gared said. "If he says they are dead, that's proof enough
for me."
Will had known they would drag him into the quarrel sooner or later. He wished
it had been later rather than sooner. "My mother told me that dead men sing no
songs," he put in.
"My wet nurse said the same thing, Will," Royce replied. "Never believe
anything you hear at a woman's tit. There are things to be learned even from
the dead." His voice echoed, too loud in the twilit forest.
"We have a long ride before us," Gared pointed out. "Eight days, maybe nine.
And night is falling."
Ser Waymar Royce glanced at the sky with disinterest. "It does that every day
about this time. Are you unmanned by the dark, Gared?"
Will could see the tightness around Gared's mouth, the barely sup
2 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN
pressed anger in his eyes under the thick black hood of his cloak. Gared had
spent forty years in the Night's Watch, man and boy, and he was not accustomed
to being made light of. Yet it was more than that. Under the wounded pride,
Will could sense something else in the older man. You could taste it; a
nervous tension that came perilous close to fear.
Will shared his unease. He had been four years on the Wall. The first time he
had been sent beyond, all the old stories had come rushing back, and his
bowels had turned to water. He had laughed about it afterward. He was a
veteran of a hundred rangings by now, and the endless dark wilderness that the
southron called the haunted forest had no more terrors for him.
Until tonight. Something was different tonight. There was an edge to this
darkness that made his hackles rise. Nine days they had been riding, north and
northwest and then north again, farther and farther from the Wall, hard on the
track of a band of wildling raiders. Each day had been worse than the day that
had come before it. Today was the worst of all. A cold wind was blowing out of
the north, and it made the trees rustle like living things. All day, Will had
felt as though something were watching him, something cold and implacable that
loved him not. Gared had felt it too. Will wanted nothing so much as to ride
hellbent for the safety of the Wall, but that was not a feeling to share with
your commander.
Especially not a commander like this one.
Ser Waymar Royce was the youngest son of an ancient house with too many heirs.
He was a handsome youth of eighteen, grey-eyed and graceful and slender as a
knife. Mounted on his huge black destrier, the knight towered above Will and
Gared on their smaller garrons. He wore black leather boots, black woolen
pants, black moleskin gloves, and a fine supple coat of gleaming black
ringmail over layers of black wool and boiled leather. Ser Waymar had been a
Sworn Brother of the Night's Watch for less than half a year, but no one could
say he had not prepared for his vocation. At least insofar as his wardrobe was
concerned.
His cloak was his crowning glory; sable, thick and black and soft as sin. "Bet
he killed them all himself, he did," Gared told the barracks over wine,
"twisted their little heads off, our mighty warrior." They had all shared the
laugh.
It is hard to take orders from a man you laughed at in your cups, Will
reflected as he sat shivering atop his garron. Gared must have felt the same.
"Mormont said as we should track them, and we did," Gared said.
A GAME OF THRONES 3
"They're dead. They shan't trouble us no more. There's hard riding before us.
I don't like this weather. If it snows, we could be a fortnight getting back,
and snow's the best we can hope for. Ever seen an ice storm, my lord?"
The lordling seemed not to hear him. He studied the deepening twilight in that
half-bored, half-distracted way he had. Will had ridden with the knight long
enough to understand that it was best not to interrupt him when he looked like
that. "Tell me again what you saw, Will. All the details. Leave nothing out."
Will had been a hunter before he joined the Night's Watch. Well, a poacher in
truth. Mallister freeriders had caught him red-handed in the Mallisters' own
woods, skinning one of the Mallisters' own bucks, and it had been a choice of
putting on the black or losing a hand. No one could move through the woods as
silent as Will, and it had not taken the black brothers long to discover his
talent.
"The camp is two miles farther on, over that ridge, hard beside a stream,"
Will said. "I got close as I dared. There's eight of them, men and women both.
No children I could see. They put up a lean-to against the rock. The snow's
pretty well covered it now, but I could still make it out. No fire burning,
but the firepit was still plain as day. No one moving. I watched a long time.
No living man ever lay so still."
"Did you see any blood?"
"Well, no," Will admitted.
"Did you see any weapons?"
"Some swords, a few bows. One man had an axe. Heavy-looking, double-bladed, a
cruel piece of iron. It was on the ground beside him, right by his hand."
"Did you make note of the position of the bodies?"
Will shrugged. "A couple are sitting up against the rock. Most of them on the
ground. Fallen, like."
"Or sleeping," Royce suggested.
"Fallen," Will insisted. "There's one woman up an ironwood, halfhid in the
branches. A far-eyes." He smiled thinly. "I took care she never saw me. When I
got closer, I saw that she wasn't moving neither." Despite himself, he
shivered.
"You have a chill?" Royce asked.
"Some," Will muttered. "The wind, m'lord."
The young knight turned back to his grizzled man-at-arms. Frostfallen leaves
whispered past them, and Royce's destrier moved restlessly. "What do you think
might have killed these men, Gared?" Ser Waymar asked casually. He adjusted
the drape of his long sable cloak.
"It was the cold," Gared said with iron certainty. "I saw men freeze
4 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN
last winter, and the one before, when I was half a boy. Everyone talks about
snows forty foot deep, and how the ice wind comes howling out of the north,
but the real enemy is the cold. It steals up on you quieter than Will, and at
first you shiver and your teeth chatter and you stamp your feet and dream of
mulled wine and nice hot fires. It burns, it does. Nothing burns like the
cold. But only for a while. Then it gets inside you and starts to fill you up,
and after a while you don't have the strength to fight it. It's easier just to
sit down or go to sleep. They say you don't feel any pain toward the end.
First you go weak and drowsy, and everything starts to fade, and then it's
like sinking into a sea of warm milk. Peaceful, like."
"Such eloquence, Gared," Ser Waymar observed. "I never suspected you had it in
you."
"I've had the cold in me too, lordling." Gared pulled back his hood, giving
Ser Waymar a good long look at the stumps where his ears had been. "Two ears,
three toes, and the little finger off my left hand. I got off light. We found
my brother frozen at his watch, with a smile on his face."
Ser Waymar shrugged. "You ought dress more warmly, Gared."
Gared glared at the lordling, the scars around his ear holes flushed red with
anger where Maester Aemon had cut the ears away. "We'll see how warm you can
dress when the winter comes." He pulled up his hood and hunched over his
garron, silent and sullen.
"If Gared said it was the cold . . ." Will began.
"Have you drawn any watches this past week, Will?"
"Yes, m'lord." There never was a week when he did not draw a dozen bloody
watches. What was the man driving at?
"And how did you find the Wall?"
"Weeping," Will said, frowning. He saw it clear enough, now that the lordling
had pointed it out. "They couldn't have froze. Not if the Wall was weeping. It
wasn't cold enough."
Royce nodded. "Bright lad. We've had a few light frosts this past week, and a
quick flurry of snow now and then, but surely no cold fierce enough to kill
eight grown men. Men clad in fur and leather, let me remind you, with shelter
near at hand, and the means of making fire." The knight's smile was cocksure.
"Will, lead us there. I would see these dead men for myself."
And then there was nothing to be done for it. The order had been given, and
honor bound them to obey.
Will went in front, his shaggy little garron picking the way carefully through
the undergrowth. A light snow had fallen the night before, and there were
stones and roots and hidden sinks lying just under its
A GAME OF THRONES 5
crust, waiting for the careless and the unwary. Ser Waymar Royce came next,
his great black destrier snorting impatiently. The warhorse was the wrong
mount for ranging, but try and tell that to the lordling. Gared brought up the
rear. The old man-at-arms muttered to himself as he rode.
Twilight deepened. The cloudless sky turned a deep purple, the color of an old
bruise, then faded to black. The stars began to come out. A half-moon rose.
Will was grateful for the light.
"We can make a better pace than this, surely," Royce said when the moon was
full risen.
"Not with this horse," Will said. Fear had made him insolent. "Perhaps my lord
would care to take the lead?"
Ser Waymar Royce did not deign to reply.
Somewhere off in the wood a wolf howled.
Will pulled his garron over beneath an ancient gnarled ironwood and
dismounted.
"Why are you stopping?" Ser Waymar asked.
"Best go the rest of the way on foot, m'lord. It's just over that ridge."
Royce paused a moment, staring off into the distance, his face reflective. A
cold wind whispered through the trees. His great sable cloak stirred behind
like something half-alive.
"There's something wrong here," Gared muttered.
The young knight gave him a disdainful smile. "Is there?"
"Can't you feel it?" Gared asked. "Listen to the darkness."
Will could feel it. Four years in the Night's Watch, and he had never been so
afraid. What was it?
"Wind. Trees rustling. A wolf. Which sound is it that unmans you so, Gared?"
When Gared did not answer, Royce slid gracefully from his saddle. He tied the
destrier securely to a low-hanging limb, well away from the other horses, and
drew his longsword from its sheath. Jewels glittered in its hilt, and the
moonlight ran down the shining steel. It was a splendid weapon, castle-forged,
and new-made from the look of it. Will doubted it had ever been swung in
anger.
"The trees press close here," Will warned. "That sword will tangle you up,
m1ord. Better a knife."
"If I need instruction, I will ask for it," the young lord said. "Gared, stay
here. Guard the horses."
Gared dismounted. "We need a fire. I'll see to it."
"How big a fool are you, old man? If there are enemies in this wood, a fire is
the last thing we want."
6 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN
"There's some enemies a fire will keep away," Gared said. "Bears and
direwolves and ... and other things . . ."
Ser Waymar's mouth became a hard line. "No fire."
Gared's hood shadowed his face, but Will could see the hard glitter in his
eyes as he stared at the knight. For a moment he was afraid the older man
would go for his sword. It was a short, ugly thing, its grip discolored by
sweat, its edge nicked from hard use, but Will would not have given an iron
bob for the lordling's life if Gared pulled it from its scabbard.
Finally Gared looked down. "No fire," he muttered, low under his breath.
Royce took it for acquiescence and turned away. "Lead on," he said to Will.
Will threaded their way through a thicket, then started up the slope to the
low ridge where he had found his vantage point under a sentinel tree. Under
the thin crust of snow, the ground was damp and muddy, slick footing, with
rocks and hidden roots to trip you up. Will made no sound as he climbed.
Behind him, he heard the soft metallic slither of the lordling's ringmail, the
rustle of leaves, and muttered curses as reaching branches grabbed at his
longsword and tugged on his splendid sable cloak.
The great sentinel was right there at the top of the ridge, where Will had
known it would be, its lowest branches a bare foot off the ground. Will slid
in underneath, flat on his belly in the snow and the mud, and looked down on
the empty clearing below.
His heart stopped in his chest. For a moment he dared not breathe. Moonlight
shone down on the clearing, the ashes of the firepit, the snow-covered lean-
to, the great rock, the little half-frozen stream. Everything was just as it
had been a few hours ago.
They were gone. All the bodies were gone.
"Gods!" he heard behind him. A sword slashed at a branch as Ser Waymar Royce
gained the ridge. He stood there beside the sentinel, longsword in hand, his
cloak billowing behind him as the wind came up, outlined nobly against the
stars for all to see.
"Get down!" Will whispered urgently. "Something's wrong."
Royce did not move. He looked down at the empty clearing and laughed. "Your
dead men seem to have moved camp, Will."
Will's voice abandoned him. He groped for words that did not come. It was not
possible. His eyes swept back and forth over the abandoned campsite, stopped
on the axe. A huge double-bladed battle-axe, still lying where he had seen it
last, untouched. A valuable weapon . . .
A GAME OF THRONES 7
"On your feet, Will," Ser Waymar commanded. "There's no one here. I won't have
you hiding under a bush."
Reluctantly, Will obeyed.
Ser Waymar looked him over with open disapproval. "I am not going back to
Castle Black a failure on my first ranging. We will find these men." He
glanced around. "Up the tree. Be quick about it. Look for a fire."
Will turned away, wordless. There was no use to argue. The wind was moving. It
cut right through him. He went to the tree, a vaulting grey-green sentinel,
and began to climb. Soon his hands were sticky with sap, and he was lost among
the needles. Fear filled his gut like a meal he could not digest. He whispered
a prayer to the nameless gods of the wood, and slipped his dirk free of its
sheath. He put it between his teeth to keep both hands free for climbing. The
taste of cold iron in his mouth gave him comfort.
Down below, the lordling called out suddenly, "Who goes there?" Will heard
uncertainty in the challenge. He stopped climbing; he listened; he watched.
The woods gave answer: the rustle of leaves, the icy rush of the stream, a
distant hoot of a snow owl.
The Others made no sound.
Will saw movement from the corner of his eye. Pale shapes gliding through the
wood. He turned his head, glimpsed a white shadow in the darkness. Then it was
gone. Branches stirred gently in the wind, scratching at one another with
wooden fingers. Will opened his mouth to call down a warning, and the words
seemed to freeze in his throat. Perhaps he was wrong. Perhaps it had only been
a bird, a reflection on the snow, some trick of the moonlight. What had he
seen, after all?
"Will, where are you?" Ser Waymar called up. "Can you see anything?" He was
turning in a slow circle, suddenly wary, his sword in hand. He must have felt
them, as Will felt them. There was nothing to see. "Answer me! Why is it so
cold?"
It was cold. Shivering, Will clung more tightly to his perch. His face pressed
hard against the trunk of the sentinel. He could feel the sweet, sticky sap on
his cheek.
A shadow emerged from the dark of the wood. It stood in front of Royce. Tall,
it was, and gaunt and hard as old bones, with flesh pale as milk. Its armor
seemed to change color as it moved; here it was white as new-fallen snow,
there black as shadow, everywhere dappled with the deep grey-green of the
trees. The patterns ran like moonlight on water with every step it took.
Will heard the breath go out of Ser Waymar Royce in a long hiss.
8 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN
"Come no farther," the lordling warned. His voice cracked like a boy's. He
threw the long sable cloak back over his shoulders, to free his arms for
battle, and took his sword in both hands. The wind had stopped. It was very
cold.
The Other slid forward on silent feet. In its hand was a longsword like none
that Will had ever seen. No human metal had gone into the forging of that
blade. It was alive with moonlight, translucent, a shard of crystal so thin
that it seemed almost to vanish when seen edge-on. There was a faint blue
shimmer to the thing, a ghost-light that played around its edges, and somehow
Will knew it was sharper than any razor.
Ser Waymar met him bravely. "Dance with me then." He lifted his sword high
over his head, defiant. His hands trembled from the weight of it, or perhaps
from the cold. Yet in that moment, Will thought, he was a boy no longer, but a
man of the Night's Watch.
The Other halted. Will saw its eyes; blue, deeper and bluer than any human
eyes, a blue that burned like ice. They fixed on the longsword trembling on
high, watched the moonlight running cold along the metal. For a heartbeat he
dared to hope.
They emerged silently from the shadows, twins to the first. Three of them . .
. four . . . five . . . Ser Waymar may have felt the cold that came with them,
but he never saw them, never heard them. Will had to call out. It was his
duty. And his death, if he did. He shivered, and hugged the tree, and kept the
silence.
The pale sword came shivering through the air.
Ser Waymar met it with steel. When the blades met, there was no ring of metal
on metal; only a high, thin sound at the edge of hearing, like an animal
screaming in pain. Royce checked a second blow, and a third, then fell back a
step. Another flurry of blows, and he fell back again.
Behind him, to right, to left, all around him, the watchers stood patient,
faceless, silent, the shifting patterns of their delicate armor making them
all but invisible in the wood. Yet they made no move to interfere.
Again and again the swords met, until Will wanted to cover his ears against
the strange anguished keening of their clash. Ser Waymar was panting from the
effort now, his breath steaming in the moonlight. His blade was white with
frost; the Other's danced with pale blue light.
Then Royce's parry came a beat too late. The pale sword bit through the
ringmail beneath his arm. The young lord cried out in pain. Blood welled
between the rings. It steamed in the cold, and the droplets seemed red as fire
where they touched the snow. Ser
A GAME OF THRONES 9
Waymar's fingers brushed his side. His moleskin glove came away soaked with
red.
The Other said something in a language that Will did not know; his voice was
like the cracking of ice on a winter lake, and the words were mocking.
Ser Waymar Royce found his fury. "For Robert!" he shouted, and he came up
snarling, lifting the frost-covered longsword with both hands and swinging it
around in a flat sidearm slash with all his weight behind it. The Other's
parry was almost lazy.
When the blades touched, the steel shattered.
A scream echoed through the forest night, and the longsword shivered into a
hundred brittle pieces, the shards scattering like a rain of needles. Royce
went to his knees, shrieking, and covered his eyes. Blood welled between his
fingers.
The watchers moved forward together, as if some signal had been given. Swords
rose and fell, all in a deathly silence. It was cold butchery. The pale blades
sliced through ringmail as if it were silk. Will closed his eyes. Far beneath
him, he heard their voices and laughter sharp as icicles.
When he found the courage to look again, a long time had passed, and the ridge
below was empty.
He stayed in the tree, scarce daring to breathe, while the moon crept slowly
across the black sky. Finally, his muscles cramping and his fingers numb with
cold, he climbed down.
Royce's body lay facedown in the snow, one arm outflung. The thick sable cloak
had been slashed in a dozen places. Lying dead like that, you saw how young he
was. A boy.
He found what was left of the sword a few feet away, the end splintered and
twisted like a tree struck by lightning. Will knelt, looked around warily, and
snatched it up. The broken sword would be his proof. Gared would know what to
make of it, and if not him, then surely that old bear Mormont or Maester
Aemon. Would Gared still be waiting with the horses? He had to hurry.
Will rose. Ser Waymar Royce stood over him.
His fine clothes were a tatter, his face a ruin. A shard from his sword
transfixed the blind white pupil of his left eye.
The right eye was open. The pupil burned blue. It saw.
The broken sword fell from nerveless fingers. Will closed his eyes to pray.
Long, elegant hands brushed his cheek, then tightened around his throat. They
were gloved in the finest moleskin and sticky with blood, yet the touch was
icy cold.
BRAN
The morning had dawned clear and cold, with a crispness that hinted at the end
of summer. They set forth at daybreak to see a man beheaded, twenty in all,
and Bran rode among them, nervous with excitement. This was the first time he
had been deemed old enough to go with his lord father and his brothers to see
the king's justice done. It was the ninth year of summer, and the seventh of
Bran's life.
The man had been taken outside a small holdfast in the hills. Robb thought he
was a wildling, his sword sworn to Mance Rayder, the Kingbeyond-the-Wall. It
made Bran's skin prickle to think of it. He remembered the hearth tales Old
Nan told them. The wildlings were cruel men, she said, slavers and slayers and
thieves. They consorted with giants and ghouls, stole girl children in the
dead of night, and drank blood from polished horns. And their women lay with
the Others in the Long Night to sire terrible half-human children.
But the man they found bound hand and foot to the holdfast wall awaiting the
king's justice was old and scrawny, not much taller than Robb. He had lost
both ears and a finger to frostbite, and he dressed all in black, the same as
a brother of the Night's Watch, except that his furs were ragged and greasy.
The breath of man and horse mingled, steaming, in the cold morning air as his
lord father had the man cut down from the wall and
12 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN
dragged before them. Robb and Jon sat tall and still on their horses, with
Bran between them on his pony, trying to seem older than seven, trying to
pretend that he'd seen all this before. A faint wind blew through the holdfast
gate. Over their heads flapped the banner of the Starks of Winterfell: a grey
direwolf racing across an ice-white field.
Bran's father sat solemnly on his horse, long brown hair stirring in the wind.
His closely trimmed beard was shot with white, making him look older than his
thirty-five years. He had a grim cast to his grey eyes this day, and he seemed
not at all the man who would sit before the fire in the evening and talk
softly of the age of heroes and the children of the forest. He had taken off
Father's face, Bran thought, and donned the face of Lord Stark of Winterfell.
There were questions asked and answers given there in the chill of morning,
but afterward Bran could not recall much of what had been said. Finally his
lord father gave a command, and two of his guardsmen dragged the ragged man to
the ironwood stump in the center of the square. They forced his head down onto
the hard black wood. Lord Eddard Stark dismounted and his ward Theon Greyjoy
brought forth the sword. "Ice," that sword was called. It was as wide across
as a man's hand, and taller even than Robb. The blade was Valyrian steel,
spell-forged and dark as smoke. Nothing held an edge like Valyrian steel.
His father peeled off his gloves and handed them to Jory Cassel, the captain
of his household guard. He took hold of Ice with both hands and said, "In the
name of Robert of the House Baratheon, the First of his Name, King of the
Andals and the Rhoynar and the First Men, Lord of the Seven Kingdoms and
Protector of the Realm, by the word of Eddard of the House Stark, Lord of
Winterfell and Warden of the North, I do sentence you to die." He lifted the
greatsword high above his head.
Bran's bastard brother Jon Snow moved closer. "Keep the pony well in hand," he
whispered. "And don't look away. Father will know if you do."
Bran kept his pony well in hand, and did not look away.
His father took off the man's head with a single sure stroke. Blood sprayed
out across the snow, as red as surnmerwine. One of the horses reared and had
to be restrained to keep from bolting. Bran could not take his eyes off the
blood. The snows around the stump drank it eagerly, reddening as he watched.
The head bounced off a thick root and rolled. It came up near Greyjoy's feet.
Theon was a lean, dark youth of nineteen who found
A GAME OF THRONES 13
everything amusing. He laughed, put his boot on the head, and kicked it away.
"Ass," Jon muttered, low enough so Greyjoy did not hear. He put a hand on
Bran's shoulder, and Bran looked over at his bastard brother. "You did well,"
Jon told him solemnly. Jon was fourteen, an old hand at justice.
It seemed colder on the long ride back to Winterfell, though the wind had died
by then and the sun was higher in the sky. Bran rode with his brothers, well
ahead of the main party, his pony struggling hard to keep up with their
horses.
"The deserter died bravely," Robb said. He was big and broad and growing every
day, with his mother's coloring, the fair skin, red-brown hair, and blue eyes
of the Tullys of Riverrun. "He had courage, at the least."
"No," Jon Snow said quietly. "It was not courage. This one was dead of fear.
You could see it in his eyes, Stark." Jon's eyes were a grey so dark they
seemed almost black, but there was little they did not see. He was of an age
with Robb, but they did not look alike. Jon was slender where Robb was
muscular, dark where Robb was fair, graceful and quick where his half brother
was strong and fast.
Robb was not impressed. "The Others take his eyes," he swore. "He died well.
Race you to the bridge?"
"Done," Jon said, kicking his horse forward. Robb cursed and followed, and
they galloped off down the trail, Robb laughing and hooting, Jon silent and
intent. The hooves of their horses kicked up showers of snow as they went.
Bran did not try to follow. His pony could not keep up. He had seen the ragged
man's eyes, and he was thinking of them now. After a while, the sound of
Robb's laughter receded, and the woods grew silent again.
So deep in thought was he that he never heard the rest of the party until his
father moved up to ride beside him. "Are you well, Bran?" he asked, not
unkindly.
"Yes, Father," Bran told him. He looked up. Wrapped in his furs and leathers,
mounted on his great warhorse, his lord father loomed over him like a giant.
"Robb says the man died bravely, but Jon says he was afraid."
"What do you think?" his father asked.
Bran thought about it. "Can a man still be brave if he's afraid?"
"That is the only time a man can be brave," his father told him. "Do you
understand why I did it?"
14 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN
"He was a wildling," Bran said. "They carry off women and sell them to the
Others."
His lord father smiled. "Old Nan has been telling you stories again. In truth,
the man was an oathbreaker, a deserter from the Night's Watch. No man is more
dangerous. The deserter knows his life is forfeit if he is taken, so he will
not flinch from any crime, no matter how vile. But you mistake me. The
question was not why the man had to die, but why I must do it."
Bran had no answer for that. "King Robert has a headsman," he said,
uncertainly.
"He does," his father admitted. "As did the Targaryen kings before him. Yet
our way is the older way. The blood of the First Men still flows in the veins
of the Starks, and we hold to the belief that the man who passes the sentence
should swing the sword. If you would take a man's life, you owe it to him to
look into his eyes and hear his final words. And if you cannot bear to do
that, then perhaps the man does not deserve to die.
"One day, Bran, you will be Robb's bannerman, holding a keep of your own for
your brother and your king, and justice will fall to you. When that day comes,
you must take no pleasure in the task, but neither must you look away. A ruler
who hides behind paid executioners soon forgets what death is."
That was when Jon reappeared on the crest of the hill before them. He waved
and shouted down at them. "Father, Bran, come quickly, see what Robb has
found!" Then he was gone again.
Jory rode up beside them. "Trouble, my lord?"
"Beyond a doubt," his lord father said. "Come, let us see what mischief my
sons have rooted out now." He sent his horse into a trot. Jory and Bran and
the rest came after.
They found Robb on the riverbank north of the bridge, with Jon still mounted
beside him. The late summer snows had been heavy this moonturn. Robb stood
knee-deep in white, his hood pulled back so the sun shone in his hair. He was
cradling something in his arm, while the boys talked in hushed, excited
voices.
The riders picked their way carefully through the drifts, groping for solid
footing on the hidden, uneven ground. Jory Cassel and Theon Greyjoy were the
first to reach the boys. Greyjoy was laughing and joking as he rode. Bran
heard the breath go out of him. "Gods!" he exclaimed, struggling to keep
control of his horse as he reached for his sword.
Jory's sword was already out. "Robb, get away from it!" he called as his horse
reared under him.
A GAME OF THRONES 15
Robb grinned and looked up from the bundle in his arms. "She can't hurt you,"
he said. "She's dead, Jory."
Bran was afire with curiosity by then. He would have spurred the pony faster,
but his father made them dismount beside the bridge and approach on foot. Bran
jumped off and ran.
By then Jon, Jory, and Theon Greyjoy had all dismounted as well. "What in the
seven hells is it?" Greyjoy was saying.
"A wolf," Robb told him.
"A freak," Greyjoy said. "Look at the size of it."
Bran's heart was thumping in his chest as he pushed through a waist-high drift
to his brothers' side.
Half-buried in bloodstained snow, a huge dark shape slumped in death. Ice had
formed in its shaggy grey fur, and the faint smell of corruption clung to it
like a woman's perfume. Bran glimpsed blind eyes crawling with maggots, a wide
mouth full of yellowed teeth. But it was the size of it that made him gasp. It
was bigger than his pony, twice the size of the largest hound in his father's
kennel.
"It's no freak," Jon said calmly. "That's a direwolf. They grow larger than
the other kind."
Theon Greyjoy said, "There's not been a direwolf sighted south of the Wall in
two hundred years."
"I see one now," Jon replied.
Bran tore his eyes away from the monster. That was when he noticed the bundle
in Robb's arms. He gave a cry of delight and moved closer. The pup was a tiny
ball of grey-black fur, its eyes still closed. It nuzzled blindly against
Robb's chest as he cradled it, searching for milk among his leathers, making a
sad little whimpery sound. Bran reached out hesitantly. "Go on," Robb told
him. "You can touch him."
Bran gave the pup a quick nervous stroke, then turned as Jon said, "Here you
go." His half brother put a second pup into his arms. "There are five of
them." Bran sat down in the snow and hugged the wolf pup to his face. Its fur
was soft and warm against his cheek.
"Direwolves loose in the realm, after so many years," muttered Hullen, the
master of horse. "I like it not."
"It is a sign," Jory said.
Father frowned. "This is only a dead animal, Jory," he said. Yet he seemed
troubled. Snow crunched under his boots as he moved around the body. "Do we
know what killed her?"
"There's something in the throat," Robb told him, proud to have found the
answer before his father even asked. "There, just under the jaw.,,
His father knelt and groped under the beast's head with his hand.
16 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN
He gave a yank and held it up for all to see. A foot of shattered antler,
tines snapped off, all wet with blood.
A sudden silence descended over the party. The men looked at the antler
uneasily, and no one dared to speak. Even Bran could sense their fear, though
he did not understand.
His father tossed the antler to the side and cleansed his hands in the snow.
"I'm surprised she lived long enough to whelp," he said. His voice broke the
spell.
"Maybe she didn't," Jory said. "I've heard tales . . . maybe the bitch was
already dead when the pups came."
"Born with the dead," another man put in. "Worse luck."
"No matter," said Hullen. "They be dead soon enough too."
Bran gave a wordless cry of dismay.
"The sooner the better," Theon Greyjoy agreed. He drew his sword. "Give the
beast here, Bran."
The little thing squirmed against him, as if it heard and understood. "No!"
Bran cried out fiercely. "It's mine."
"Put away your sword, Greyjoy," Robb said. For a moment he sounded as
commanding as their father, like the lord he would someday be. "We will keep
these pups."
"You cannot do that, boy," said Harwin, who was Hullen's son.
"It be a mercy to kill them," Hullen said.
Bran looked to his lord father for rescue, but got only a frown, a furrowed
brow. "Hullen speaks truly, son. Better a swift death than a hard one from
cold and starvation."
"No!" He could feel tears welling in his eyes, and he looked away. He did not
want to cry in front of his father.
Robb resisted stubbornly. "Ser Rodrik's red bitch whelped again last week," he
said. "It was a small litter, only two live pups. She'll have milk enough."
"She'll rip them apart when they try to nurse."
"Lord Stark," Jon said. It was strange to hear him call Father that, so
formal. Bran looked at him with desperate hope. "There are five pups," he told
Father. "Three male, two female."
"What of it, Jon?"
"You have five trueborn children," Jon said. "Three sons, two daughters. The
direwolf is the sigil of your House. Your children were meant to have these
pups, my lord."
Bran saw his father's face change, saw the other men exchange glances. He
loved Jon with all his heart at that moment. Even at seven, Bran understood
what his brother had done. The count had come right only because Jon had
omitted himself. He had included the girls,
A GAME OF THRONES 17
included even Rickon, the baby, but not the bastard who bore the surname Snow,
the name that custom decreed be given to all those in the north unlucky enough
to be born with no name of their own.
Their father understood as well. "You want no pup for yourself, Jon?" he asked
softly.
"The direwolf graces the banners of House Stark," Jon pointed out. "I am no
Stark, Father."
Their lord father regarded Jon thoughtfully. Robb rushed into the silence he
left. "I will nurse him myself, Father," he promised. "I will soak a towel
with warm milk, and give him suck from that."
摘要：

AGameofThronesv1.0BookOneofASongofIceandFireByGeorgeR.R.MartinScanned3/5/02bysliphPROLOGUE"Weshouldstartback,"Garedurgedasthewoodsbegantogrowdarkaroundthem."Thewildlingsaredead.""Dothedeadfrightenyou?"SerWaymarRoyceaskedwithjustthehintofasmile.Gareddidnotrisetothebait.Hewasanoldman,pastfifty,andheha...

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