A Feast for Dragons

dragonlords of old sounded such horns, before the Doom devoured them. With
this horn, ironmen, I can bind dragons to my will.”
    Asha laughed aloud. “A horn to bind goats to your will would
be of more use, Crow’s Eye. There are no more dragons.”
    “Again, girl, you are wrong. There are three, and I know where
to find them. Surely that is worth a driftwood crown.”
    “EURON!” shouted Left-Hand Lucas Codd.
    “EURON! CROW’S EYE! EURON!” cried the Red Oarsman.
    The mutes and mongrels from the Silence threw open
Euron’s chests and spilled out his gifts before the captains and the kings.
Then it was Hotho Harlaw the priest heard, as he filled his hands with gold.
Gorold Goodbrother shouted out as well, and Erik Anvil-Breaker. “EURON!
EURON! EURON!” The cry swelled, became a roar. “EURON! EURON! CROW’S
EYE! EURON KING!” It rolled up Nagga’s hill, like the Storm God rattling
the clouds. “EURON! EURON! EURON! EURON! EURON! EURON!”
    Even a priest may doubt. Even a prophet may know terror.
Aeron Damphair reached within himself for his god and discovered only silence.
As a thousand voices shouted out his brother’s name, all he could hear was the
scream of a rusted iron hinge.
    ----

    JON
    The white wolf raced through a black wood, beneath a pale
cliff as tall as the sky. The moon ran with him, slipping through a tangle of
bare branches overhead, across the starry sky.
    “Snow,” the moon murmured. The wolf made no answer. Snow
crunched beneath his paws. The wind sighed through the trees.
    Far off, he could hear his packmates calling to him, like to
like. They were hunting too. A wild rain lashed down upon his black brother as
he tore at the flesh of an enormous goat, washing the blood from his side where
the goat’s long horn had raked him. In another place, his little sister lifted
her head to sing to the moon, and a hundred small grey cousins broke off their
hunt to sing with her. The hills were warmer where they were, and full of food.
Many a night his sister’s pack gorged on the flesh of sheep and cows and
horses, the prey of men, and sometimes even on the flesh of man himself.
    “Snow,” the moon called down again, cackling. The white wolf
padded along the man trail beneath the icy cliff. The taste of blood was on his
tongue, and his ears rang to the song of the hundred cousins. Once they had
been six, five whimpering blind in the snow beside their dead mother, sucking
cool milk from her hard dead nipples whilst he crawled off alone. Four
remained … and one the white wolf could no longer sense.
    “Snow,” the moon insisted.
    The white wolf ran from it, racing toward the cave of night
where the sun had hidden, his breath frosting in the air. On starless nights
the great cliff was as black as stone, a darkness towering high above the wide
world, but when the moon came out it shimmered pale and icy as a frozen stream.
The wolf’s pelt was thick and shaggy, but when the wind blew along the ice no
fur could keep the chill out. On the other side the wind was colder still, the
wolf sensed. That was where his brother was, the grey brother who smelled of
summer.
    “Snow.” An icicle tumbled from a branch. The white wolf
turned and bared his teeth.
“Snow!”
His fur rose bristling, as
the woods dissolved around him.
“Snow, snow, snow!”
He heard
the beat of wings. Through the gloom a raven flew.
    It landed on Jon Snow’s chest with a
thump
and a scrabbling of claws.
“SNOW!”
it screamed into his face.
    “I hear you.” The room was dim, his pallet hard. Grey light
leaked through the shutters, promising another bleak cold day. “Is this how you
woke Mormont? Get your feathers out of my face.” Jon wriggled an arm out from
under his blankets to shoo the raven off. It was a big bird, old and bold and
scruffy, utterly without fear.
“Snow,”
it cried, flapping to
his bedpost.
“Snow, snow.”
Jon filled his fist with a pillow
and let fly, but the bird took to the air. The pillow struck the wall and
burst, scattering stuffing everywhere just as Dolorous Edd Tollett poked his
head through the door. “Beg pardon,” he said, ignoring the flurry of feathers,
“shall I fetch m’lord some breakfast?”
    “Corn,”
cried the raven.
“Corn,
corn.”
    “Roast raven,” Jon suggested. “And half a pint of ale.”
Having a steward fetch and serve for him still felt strange; not long ago, it
would have been him fetching breakfast for Lord Commander Mormont.
    “Three corns