A Feast for Dragons

jerkin, she felt naked. When one man said, “Have
a look at that,” she knew he was not speaking of Ser Shadrich.
    The innkeep appeared, clutching three tankards in each hand
and slopping ale at every step.
    “Do you have rooms, good man?” the merchant asked him.
    “I might,” the innkeep said, “for them as has coin.”
    Ser Creighton Longbough looked offended. “Naggle, is that
how you would greet an old friend? ’Tis me, Longbough.”
    “’Tis you indeed. You owe me seven stags. Show me some
silver and I’ll show you a bed.” The innkeep set the tankards down one by one,
slopping more ale on the table in the process.
    “I will pay for one room for myself, and a second for my two
companions.” Brienne indicated Ser Creighton and Ser Illifer.
    “I shall take a room as well,” said the merchant, “for
myself and good Ser Shadrich. My serving men will bed down in your stables, if
it please you.”
    The innkeep looked them over. “It don’t please me, but might
be I’ll allow it. Will you be wanting supper? That’s good goat on the spit,
that is.”
    “I shall judge its goodness for myself,” Hibald announced.
“My men will content themselves with bread and drippings.”
    And so they supped. Brienne tried the goat herself, after
following the innkeep up the steps, pressing some coins into his hand, and
stashing her goods in the second room he showed her. She ordered goat for Ser
Creighton and Ser Illifer as well, since they had shared their trout with her.
The hedge knights and the septon washed down the meat with ale, but Brienne
drank a cup of goat’s milk. She listened to the table talk, hoping against hope
that she might hear something that would help her find Sansa.
    “You come from King’s Landing,” one of the locals said to
Hibald. “Is it true that the Kingslayer’s been crippled?”
    “True enough,” Hibald said. “He’s lost his sword hand.”
    “Aye,” Ser Creighton said, “chewed off by a direwolf, I
hear, one of them monsters come down from the north. Nought that’s good ever
come from the north. Even their gods are queer.”
    “It was not a wolf,” Brienne heard herself say. “Ser Jaime
lost his hand to a Qohorik sellsword.”
    “It is no easy thing to fight with your off hand,” observed
the Mad Mouse.
    “Bah,” said Ser Creighton Longbough. “As it happens, I fight
as well with either hand.”
    “Oh, I have no doubt of that.” Ser Shadrich lifted his
tankard in salute.
    Brienne remembered her fight with Jaime Lannister in the woods.
It had been all that she could do to keep his blade at bay. He was weak from
his imprisonment, and chained at the wrists. No knight in the Seven Kingdoms
could have stood against him at his full strength, with no chains to hamper
him. Jaime had done many wicked things, but the man could fight! His maiming
had been monstrously cruel. It was one thing to slay a lion, another to hack
his paw off and leave him broken and bewildered.
    Suddenly the common room was too loud to endure a moment
longer. She muttered her good-nights and took herself up to bed. The ceiling in
her room was low; entering with a taper in her hand, Brienne had to duck or
crack her head. The only furnishings were a bed wide enough to sleep six, and
the stub of a tallow candle on the sill. She lit it with the taper, barred the
door, and hung her sword belt from a bedpost. Her scabbard was a plain thing,
wood wrapped in cracked brown leather, and her sword was plainer still. She had
bought it in King’s Landing, to replace the blade the Brave Companions had
stolen. Renly’s sword. It still hurt, knowing she had lost it.
    But she had another longsword hidden in her bedroll. She sat
on the bed and took it out. Gold glimmered yellow in the candlelight and rubies
smoldered red. When she slid Oathkeeper from the ornate scabbard, Brienne’s
breath caught in her throat. Black and red the ripples ran, deep within the
steel. Valyrian steel, spell-forged. It was a sword fit for a hero. When
she was small, her nurse had filled her ears with tales of valor, regaling her
with the noble exploits of Ser Galladon of Morne, Florian the Fool, Prince
Aemon the Dragonknight, and other champions. Each man bore a famous sword, and
surely Oathkeeper belonged in their company, even if she herself did not.
“You’ll be defending Ned Stark’s daughter with Ned Stark’s own steel,” Jaime
had promised.
    Kneeling between the bed and wall, she held the blade and
said a silent