A Dance With Dragons

worms.”
    The man gaped at him. “The captain put him in command.”
    “You’d put a dying horse down.”
    “What horse? I never had no horse.”
    I did. The memory came back in a rush. Smiler’s screams had sounded almost human. His mane afire, he had reared up on his hind legs, blind with pain, lashing out with his hooves. No, no. Not mine, he was not mine, Reek never had a horse. “I will kill him for you.” Reek snatched up Ralf Kenning’s sword where it leaned against his shield. He still had fingers enough to clasp the hilt. When he laid the edge of the blade against the swollen throat of the creature on the straw, the skin split open in a gout of black blood and yellow pus. Kenning jerked violently, then lay still. An awful stench filled the room. Reek bolted for the steps. The air was damp and cold there, but much cleaner by comparison. The ironman stumbled out after him, white-faced and struggling not to retch. Reek grasped him by the arm. “Who was second-in-command? Where are the rest of the men?”
    “Up on the battlements, or in the hall. Sleeping, drinking. I’ll take you if you like.”
    “Do it now.” Ramsay had only given him a day.
    The hall was dark stone, high ceilinged and drafty, full of drifting smoke, its stone walls spotted by huge patches of pale lichen. A peat fire burned low in a hearth blackened by the hotter blazes of years past. A massive table of carved stone filled the chamber, as it had for centuries. There was where I sat, the last time I was here, he remembered. Robb was at the head of the table, with the Greatjon to his right and Roose Bolton on his left. The Glovers sat next to Helman Tallhart. Karstark and his sons were across from them.
    Two dozen ironborn sat drinking at the table. A few looked at him with dull, flat eyes when he entered. The rest ignored him. All the men were strangers to him. Several wore cloaks fastened by brooches in the shape of silver codfish. The Codds were not well regarded in the Iron Islands; the men were said to be thieves and cowards, the women wantons who bedded with their own fathers and brothers. It did not surprise him that his uncle had chosen to leave these men behind when the Iron Fleet went home. This will make my task that much easier. “Ralf Kenning is dead,” he said. “Who commands here?”
    The drinkers stared at him blankly. One laughed. Another spat. Finally one of the Codds said, “Who asks?”
    “Lord Balon’s son.” Reek, my name is Reek, it rhymes with cheek. “I am here at the command of Ramsay Bolton, Lord of the Hornwood and heir to the Dreadfort, who captured me at Winterfell. His host is north of you, his father’s to the south, but Lord Ramsay is prepared to be merciful if you yield Moat Cailin to him before the sun goes down.” He drew out the letter that they’d given him and tossed it on the table before the drinkers.
    One of them picked it up and turned it over in his hands, picking at the pink wax that sealed it. After a moment he said, “Parchment. What good is that? It’s cheese we need, and meat.”
    “Steel, you mean,” said the man beside him, a greybeard whose left arm ended in a stump. “Swords. Axes. Aye, and bows, a hundred more bows, and men to loose the arrows.”
    “Ironborn do not surrender,” said a third voice. “Tell that to my father. Lord Balon bent the knee when Robert broke his wall. Elsewise he would have died. As you will if you do not yield.” He gestured at the parchment. “Break the seal. Read the words. That is a safe conduct, written in Lord Ramsay’s own hand. Give up your swords and come with me, and his lordship will feed you and give you leave to march unmolested to the Stony Shore and find a ship for home. Elsewise you die.”
    “Is that a threat?” One of the Codds pushed to his feet. A big man, but pop-eyed and wide of mouth, with dead white flesh. He looked as if his father had sired him on a fish, but he still wore a longsword. “Dagon Codd yields to no man.”
    No, please, you have to listen. The thought of what Ramsay would do to him if he crept back to camp without the garrison’s surrender was almost enough to make him piss his breeches. Reek, Reek, it rhymes with leak. “Is that your answer?” The words rang feebly in his ears. “Does this codfish speak for all of you?”
    The guard who had met him at the door seemed less certain. “Victarion commanded us to hold, he did. I heard him with my own ears. Hold here till I return, he told