A Feast for Dragons

the
nightfire as the sun went down, but they wore their ornate armor as they led
the crew in prayer, and their spears were close at hand. And not a single
sailor tried to rub the head of either dwarf.
    “Should we joust for them again?” Penny asked one night.
    “Best not,” said Tyrion. “That would only serve to remind
them we have a nice plump pig.” Though Pretty was growing less plump with every
passing day, and Crunch was fur and bones.
    That night he dreamed that he was back in King’s Landing
again, a crossbow in his hand. “Wherever whores go,” Lord Tywin said, but when
Tyrion’s finger clenched and the bowstring
thrummed
, it was
Penny with the quarrel buried in her belly.
    He woke to the sound of shouting.
    The deck was moving under him, and for half a heartbeat he
was so confused he thought he was back on the
Shy Maid
. A whiff
of pigshit brought him to his senses. The Sorrows were behind him, half a world
away, and the joys of that time as well. He remembered how sweet Lemore had
looked after her morning swims, with beads of water glistening on her naked
skin, but the only maiden here was his poor Penny, the stunted little dwarf
girl.
    Something was afoot, though. Tyrion slipped from the
hammock, yawning, and looked about for his boots. And mad though it was, he
looked for the crossbow as well, but of course there was none such to be found.
A pity
, he mused,
it might have been some use when the
big folk come to eat me
. He pulled his boots on and climbed on deck to
see what the shouting was about. Penny was there before him, her eyes wide with
wonder. “A sail,” she shouted, “there, there, do you see? A sail, and they’ve
seen us, they have. A
sail
.”
    This time he kissed her … once on each cheek, once
on the brow, and one last one on the mouth. She was flushed and laughing by the
last kiss, suddenly shy again, but it made no matter. The other ship was
closing. A big galley, he saw. Her oars left a long white wake behind her.
“What ship is that?” he asked Ser Jorah Mormont. “Can you read her name?”
    “I don’t need to read her name. We’re downwind. I can smell
her.” Mormont drew his sword. “That’s a slaver.”

----

    THE TURNCLOAK
    The first flakes came drifting down as the sun was setting
in the west. By nightfall snow was coming down so heavily that the moon rose
behind a white curtain, unseen.
    “The gods of the north have unleashed their wroth on Lord Stannis,”
Roose Bolton announced come morning as men gathered in Winterfell’s Great Hall
to break their fast. “He is a stranger here, and the old gods will not suffer
him to live.”
    His men roared their approval, banging their fists on the
long plank tables. Winterfell might be ruined, but its granite walls would
still keep the worst of the wind and weather at bay. They were well stocked
with food and drink; they had fires to warm them when off duty, a place to dry
their clothes, snug corners to lie down and sleep. Lord Bolton had laid by
enough wood to keep the fires fed for half a year, so the Great Hall was always
warm and cozy. Stannis had none of that.
    Theon Greyjoy did not join the uproar. Neither did the men
of House Frey, he did not fail to note.
They are strangers here as well
,
he thought, watching Ser Aenys Frey and his half-brother Ser Hosteen. Born and
bred in the riverlands, the Freys had never seen a snow like this.
The
north has already claimed three of their blood
, Theon thought,
recalling the men that Ramsay had searched for fruitlessly, lost between White
Harbor and Barrowton.
    On the dais, Lord Wyman Manderly sat between a pair of his
White Harbor knights, spooning porridge into his fat face. He did not seem to
be enjoying it near as much as he had the pork pies at the wedding. Elsewhere
one-armed Harwood Stout talked quietly with the cadaverous Whoresbane Umber.
    Theon queued up with the other men for porridge, ladled into
wooden bowls from a row of copper kettles. The lords and knights had milk and
honey and even a bit of butter to sweeten their portions, he saw, but none of
that would be offered him. His reign as prince of Winterfell had been a brief
one. He had played his part in the mummer’s show, giving the feigned Arya to be
wed, and now he was of no further use to Roose Bolton.
    “First winter I remember, the snows came over my head,” said
a Hornwood man in the queue ahead of him.
    “Aye, but you were only three foot tall at the time,” a
rider from the Rills