A Dance With Dragons

and unharmed. Grimtongue, get up that thrice-damned tower and tell Cromm and Hagen to keep a sharp eye out. If they see so much as a hare, I want to know of it.”
    Deepwood’s bailey was soon full of frightened people. Her own men were struggling into armor or climbing up onto the wallwalks. Galbart Glover’s folk looked on with fearful faces, whispering to one another. Glover’s steward had to be carried up from the cellar, having lost a leg when Asha took the castle. The maester protested noisily until Lorren cracked him hard across the face with a mailed fist. Lady Glover emerged from the godswood on the arm of her bedmaid. “I warned you that this day would come, my lady,” she said, when she saw the corpses on the ground.
    The maester pushed forward, with blood dripping from a broken nose. “Lady Asha, I beg you, strike your banners and let me bargain for your life. You have used us fairly, and with honor. I will tell them so.”
    “We will exchange you for the children.” Sybelle Glover’s eyes were red, from tears and sleepless nights. “Gawen is four now. I missed his nameday. And my sweet girl … give me back my children, and no harm need come to you. Nor to your men.”
    The last part was a lie, Asha knew. She might be exchanged, perhaps, shipped back to the Iron Islands to her husband’s loving arms. Her cousins would be ransomed too, as would Tris Botley and a few more of her company, those whose kin had coin enough to buy them back. For the rest it would be the axe, the noose, or the Wall. Still, they have the right to choose.
    Asha climbed on a barrel so all of them could see her. “The wolves are coming down on us with their teeth bared. They will be at our gates before the sun comes up. Shall we throw down our spears and axes and plead with them to spare us?”
    “No.” Qarl the Maid drew his sword. “No,” echoed Lorren Longaxe. “ No, ” boomed Rolfe the Dwarf, a bear of a man who stood a head taller than anyone else in her crew. “ Never. ” And Hagen’s horn sounded again from on high, ringing out across the bailey.
    AHooooooooooooooooooooooo, the warhorn cried, long and low, a sound to curdle blood. Asha had begun to hate the sound of horns. On Old Wyk her uncle’s hellhorn had blown a death knell for her dreams, and now Hagen was sounding what might well be her last hour on earth. If I must die, I will die with an axe in my hand and a curse upon my lips.
    “To the walls,” Asha Greyjoy told her men. She turned her own steps for the watchtower, with Tris Botley right behind her.
    The wooden watchtower was the tallest thing this side of the mountains, rising twenty feet above the biggest sentinels and soldier pines in the surrounding woods. “There, Captain,” said Cromm, when she made the platform. Asha saw only trees and shadows, the moonlit hills and the snowy peaks beyond. Then she realized that trees were creeping closer. “Oho,” she laughed, “these mountain goats have cloaked themselves in pine boughs.” The woods were on the move, creeping toward the castle like a slow green tide. She thought back to a tale she had heard as a child, about the children of the forest and their battles with the First Men, when the greenseers turned the trees to warriors.
    “We cannot fight so many,” Tris Botley said. “We can fight as many as come, pup,” insisted Cromm. “The more there are, the more the glory. Men will sing of us.”
    Aye, but will they sing of your courage or my folly? The sea was five long leagues away. Would they do better to stand and fight behind Deepwood’s deep ditches and wooden walls? Deepwood’s wooden walls did the Glovers small good when I took their castle, she reminded herself. Why should they serve me any better?
    “Come the morrow we will feast beneath the sea.” Cromm stroked his axe as if he could not wait.
    Hagen lowered his horn. “If we die with dry feet, how will we find our way to the Drowned God’s watery halls?”
    “These woods are full of little streams,” Cromm assured him. “All of them lead to rivers, and all the rivers to the sea.”
    Asha was not ready to die, not here, not yet. “A living man can find the sea more easily than a dead one. Let the wolves keep their gloomy woods. We are making for the ships.”
    She wondered who was in command of her foes. If it were me, I would take the strand and put our longships to the torch before attacking Deepwood. The wolves would not find that easy, though, not without