A Dance With Dragons

Reek, it rhymes with squeak. He had to forget that for a little while, though. No man would ever yield to a creature such as Reek, no matter how desperate his situation. He must pretend to be a prince again.
    His captor stared at his face, squinting, his mouth twisted in suspicion. His teeth were brown, and his breath stank of ale and onion. “Lord Balon’s sons were killed.”
    “My brothers. Not me. Lord Ramsay took me captive after Winterfell. He’s sent me here to treat with you. Do you command here?”
    “Me?” The man lowered his knife and took a step backwards, almost stumbling over the corpse. “Not me, m’lord.” His mail was rusted, his leathers rotting. On the back of one hand an open sore wept blood. “Ralf Kenning has the command. The captain said. I’m on the door, is all.”
    “And who is this?” Reek gave the corpse a kick.
    The guard stared at the dead man as if seeing him for the first time. “Him … he drank the water. I had to cut his throat for him, to stop his screaming. Bad belly. You can’t drink the water. That’s why we got the ale.” The guard rubbed his face, his eyes red and inflamed. “We used to drag the dead down into the cellars. All the vaults are flooded down there. No one wants to take the trouble now, so we just leave them where they fall.”
    “The cellar is a better place for them. Give them to the water. To the Drowned God.”
    The man laughed. “No gods down there, m’lord. Only rats and water snakes. White things, thick as your leg. Sometimes they slither up the steps and bite you in your sleep.”
    Reek remembered the dungeons underneath the Dreadfort, the rat squirming between his teeth, the taste of warm blood on his lips. If I fail, Ramsay will send me back to that, but first he’ll flay the skin from another finger. “How many of the garrison are left?”
    “Some,” said the ironman. “I don’t know. Fewer than we was before. Some in the Drunkard’s Tower too, I think. Not the Children’s Tower. Dagon Codd went over there a few days back. Only two men left alive, he said, and they was eating on the dead ones. He killed them both, if you can believe that.”
    Moat Cailin has fallen, Reek realized then, only no one has seen fit to tell them. He rubbed his mouth to hide his broken teeth, and said, “I need to speak with your commander.”
    “Kenning?” The guard seemed confused. “He don’t have much to say these days. He’s dying. Might be he’s dead. I haven’t seen him since … I don’t remember when …”
    “Where is he? Take me to him.”
    “Who will keep the door, then?”
    “Him.” Reek gave the corpse a kick.
    That made the man laugh. “Aye. Why not? Come with me, then.” He pulled a torch down from a wall sconce and waved it till it blazed up bright and hot. “This way.” The guard led him through a door and up a spiral stair, the torchlight glimmering off black stone walls as they climbed.
    The chamber at the top of the steps was dark, smoky, and oppressively hot. A ragged skin had been hung across the narrow window to keep the damp out, and a slab of peat smoldered in a brazier. The smell in the room was foul, a miasma of mold and piss and nightsoil, of smoke and sickness. Soiled rushes covered the floor, whilst a heap of straw in the corner passed for a bed.
    Ralf Kenning lay shivering beneath a mountain of furs. His arms were stacked beside him—sword and axe, mail hauberk, iron warhelm. His shield bore the storm god’s cloudy hand, lightning crackling from his fingers down to a raging sea, but the paint was discolored and peeling, the wood beneath starting to rot.
    Ralf was rotting too. Beneath the furs he was naked and feverish, his pale puffy flesh covered with weeping sores and scabs. His head was misshapen, one cheek grotesquely swollen, his neck so engorged with blood that it threatened to swallow his face. The arm on that same side was big as a log and crawling with white worms. No one had bathed him or shaved him for many days, from the look of him. One eye wept pus, and his beard was crusty with dried vomit. “What happened to him?” asked Reek.
    “He was on the parapets and some bog devil loosed an arrow at him. It was only a graze, but … they poison their shafts, smear the points with shit and worse things. We poured boiling wine into the wound, but it made no difference.”
    I cannot treat with this thing. “Kill him,” Reek told the guard. “His wits are gone. He’s full of blood and