A Feast for Dragons

castellan. He did not
understand why Lyanna should be writing Stannis, and could not help but wonder
if the girl’s answer might have been different if the letter had been sealed
with a direwolf instead of a crowned stag, and signed by Jon Stark, Lord of
Winterfell.
It is too late for such misgivings. You made your choice
.
    “Two score ravens were sent out,” the king complained, “yet
we get no response but silence and defiance. Homage is the duty every leal
subject owes his king. Yet your father’s bannermen all turn their back on me,
save the Karstarks. Is Arnolf Karstark the only man of honor in the north?”
    Arnolf Karstark was the late Lord Rickard’s uncle. He had
been made the castellan of Karhold when his nephew and his sons went south with
Robb, and he had been the first to respond to King Stannis’s call for homage,
with a raven declaring his allegiance.
The Karstarks have no other
choice
, Jon might have said. Rickard Karstark had betrayed the
direwolf and spilled the blood of lions. The stag was Karhold’s only hope. “In
times as confused as these, even men of honor must wonder where their duty
lies. Your Grace is not the only king in the realm demanding homage.”
    Lady Melisandre stirred. “Tell me, Lord
Snow … where were these other kings when the wild people stormed your
Wall?”
    “A thousand leagues away and deaf to our need,” Jon replied.
“I have not forgotten that, my lady. Nor will I. But my father’s bannermen have
wives and children to protect, and smallfolk who will die should they choose
wrongly. His Grace asks much of them. Give them time, and you will have your
answers.”
    “Answers such as this?” Stannis crushed Lyanna’s letter in
his fist.
    “Even in the north men fear the wroth of Tywin Lannister.
Boltons make bad enemies as well. It is not happenstance that put a flayed man
on their banners. They north rode with Robb, bled with him, died for him. They
have supped on grief and death, and now you come to offer them another serving.
Do you blame them if they hang back? Forgive me, Your Grace, but some will look
at you and see only another doomed pretender.”
    “If His Grace is doomed, your realm is doomed as well,” said
Lady Melisandre. “Remember that, Lord Snow. It is the one true king of Westeros
who stands before you.”
    Jon kept his face a mask. “As you say, my lady.”
    Stannis snorted. “You spend your words as if every one were
a golden dragon. I wonder, how much gold do you have laid by?”
    “Gold?”
Are those the dragons the red woman means to
wake? Dragons made of gold?
“Such taxes as we collect are paid in
kind, Your Grace. The Watch is rich in turnips but poor in coin.”
    “Turnips are not like to appease Salladhor Saan. I require
gold or silver.”
    “For that, you need White Harbor. The city cannot compare to
Oldtown or King’s Landing, but it is still a thriving port. Lord Manderly is
the richest of my lord father’s bannermen.”
    “Lord Too-Fat-to-Sit-a-Horse.” The letter that Lord Wyman
Manderly had sent back from White Harbor had spoken of his age and infirmity,
and little more. Stannis had commanded Jon not to speak of that one either.
    “Perhaps his lordship would fancy a wildling wife,” said
Lady Melisandre. “Is this fat man married, Lord Snow?”
    “His lady wife is long dead. Lord Wyman has two grown sons,
and grandchildren by the elder. And he
is
too fat to sit a
horse, thirty stone at least. Val would never have him.”
    “Just once you might try to give me an answer that would
please me, Lord Snow,” the king grumbled.
    “I would hope the truth would please you, Sire. Your men
call Val a princess, but to the free folk she is only the sister of their
king’s dead wife. If you force her to marry a man she does not want, she is
like to slit his throat on their wedding night. Even if she accepts her
husband, that does not mean the wildlings will follow him, or you. The only man
who can bind them to your cause is Mance Rayder.”
    “I know that,” Stannis said, unhappily. “I have spent hours
speaking with the man. He knows much and more of our true enemy, and there is
cunning in him, I’ll grant you. Even if he were to renounce his kingship,
though, the man remains an oathbreaker. Suffer one deserter to live, and you
encourage others to desert. No. Laws should be made of iron, not of pudding.
Mance Rayder’s life is forfeit by every law of the Seven Kingdoms.”
    “The law ends at the Wall, Your