A Feast for Dragons

dogs drew closer. “They cannot track us both.”
The girl was crazed with fear, though, and refused to leave his side, even when
he swore that he would raise a host of ironborn and come back for her if she
should be the one they followed.
    Within the hour, they were taken. One dog knocked him to the
ground, and a second bit Kyra on the leg as she scrambled up a hillside. The
rest surrounded them, baying and snarling, snapping at them every time they
moved, holding them there until Ramsay Snow rode up with his huntsmen. He was
still a bastard then, not yet a Bolton. “There you are,” he said, smiling down
at them from the saddle. “You wound me, wandering off like this. Have you grown
tired of my hospitality so soon?” That was when Kyra seized a stone and threw
it at his head. It missed by a good foot, and Ramsay smiled. “You must be
punished.”
    Reek remembered the desperate, frightened look in Kyra’s
eyes. She had never looked so young as she did in that moment, still half a
girl, but there was nothing he could do.
She brought them down on us
,
he thought.
If we had separated as I wanted, one of us might have gotten
away
.
    The memory made it hard to breathe. Reek turned away from
the torch with tears glimmering in his eyes.
What does he want of me
this time?
he thought, despairing.
Why won’t he just leave me
be? I did no wrong, not this time, why won’t they just leave me in the dark?
He’d had a rat, a fat one, warm and wriggling …
    “Should we wash him?” asked Little Walder.
    “His lordship likes him stinky,” said Big Walder. “That’s
why he named him Reek.”
    Reek. My name is Reek, it rhymes with bleak
.
He had to remember that.
Serve and obey and remember who you are, and no
more harm will come to you. He promised, his lordship promised
. Even
if he had wanted to resist, he did not have the strength. It had been scourged
from him, starved from him, flayed from him. When Little Walder pulled him up
and Big Walder waved the torch at him to herd him from the cell, he went along
as docile as a dog. If he’d had a tail, he would have tucked it down between
his legs.
    If I had a tail, the Bastard would have cut it off
.
The thought came unbidden, a vile thought, dangerous. His lordship was not a
bastard anymore.
Bolton, not Snow
. The boy king on the Iron
Throne had made Lord Ramsay legitimate, giving him the right to use his lord
father’s name. Calling him
Snow
reminded him of his bastardy
and sent him into a black rage. Reek must remember that. And his name, he must
remember his name. For half a heartbeat it eluded him, and that frightened him
so badly that he tripped on the steep dungeon steps and tore his breeches open
on the stone, drawing blood. Little Walder had to shove the torch at him to get
him back on his feet and moving again.
    Out in the yard, night was settling over the Dreadfort and a
full moon was rising over the castle’s eastern walls. Its pale light cast the
shadows of the tall triangular merlons across the frozen ground, a line of
sharp black teeth. The air was cold and damp and full of half-forgotten smells.
The world
, Reek told himself,
this is what the world
smells like
. He did not know how long he had been down there in the
dungeons, but it had to have been half a year at least.
That long, or
longer. What if it has been five years, or ten, or twenty? Would I even know?
What if I went mad down there, and half my life is gone?
But no, that
was folly. It could not have been so long. The boys were still boys. If it had
been ten years, they would have grown into men. He had to remember that.
I
must not let him drive me mad. He can take my fingers and my toes, he can put
out my eyes and slice my ears off, but he cannot take my wits unless I let him
.
    Little Walder led the way with torch in hand. Reek followed
meekly, with Big Walder just behind him. The dogs in the kennels barked as they
went by. Wind swirled through the yard, cutting through the thin cloth of the
filthy rags he wore and raising gooseprickles on his skin. The night air was
cold and damp, but he saw no sign of snow though surely winter was close at
hand. Reek wondered if he would be alive to see the snows come.
How many
fingers will I have? How many toes?
When he raised a hand, he was
shocked to see how white it was, how fleshless.
Skin and bones
,
he thought.
I have an old man’s hands
. Could he have been wrong
about the boys? What if they were not Little Walder and Big Walder after all,
but