A Feast for Dragons

battlements.”
    “Best not mention that to Stannis,” suggested Justin Massey,
“or he’ll have us marching nights as well as days.”
    This king lives in his brother’s shadow
,
Asha thought.
    Her ankle still gave a stab of pain whenever she tried to
put her weight on it. Something was broken down inside, Asha did not doubt. The
swelling had gone down at Deepwood, but the pain remained. A sprain would
surely have healed by now. Her irons
clacked
every time she
moved. The fetters chafed at her wrists and at her pride. But that was the cost
of submission.
    “No man has ever died from bending his knee,” her father had
once told her. “He who kneels may rise again, blade in hand. He who will not
kneel stays dead, stiff legs and all.” Balon Greyjoy had proved the truth of
his own words when his first rebellion failed; the kraken bent the knee to stag
and direwolf, only to rise again when Robert Baratheon and Eddard Stark were
dead.
    And so at Deepwood the kraken’s daughter had done the same
when she was dumped before the king, bound and limping (though blessedly
unraped), her ankle a blaze of pain. “I yield, Your Grace. Do as you wish with
me. I ask only that you spare my men.” Qarl and Tris and the rest who had
survived the wolfswood were all she had to care about. Only nine remained.
We
ragged nine
, Cromm named them. He was the worst wounded.
    Stannis had given her their lives. Yet she sensed no true
mercy in the man. He was determined, beyond a doubt. Nor did he lack for
courage. Men said he was just … and if his was a harsh, hard-handed
sort of justice, well, life on the Iron Islands had accustomed Asha Greyjoy to
that. All the same, she could not like this king. Those deep-set blue eyes of
his seemed always slitted in suspicion, cold fury boiling just below their
surface. Her life meant little and less to him. She was only his hostage, a prize
to show the north that he could vanquish the ironborn.
    More fool him
. Bringing down a woman was not
like to awe any northmen, if she knew the breed, and her worth as a hostage was
less than naught. Her uncle ruled the Iron Islands now, and the Crow’s Eye
would not care if she lived or died. It might matter some to the wretched ruin
of a husband that Euron had inflicted upon her, but Eric Ironmaker did not have
coin enough to ransom her. But there was no explaining such things to Stannis
Baratheon. Her very womanhood seemed to offend him. Men from the green lands
liked their women soft and sweet in silk, she knew, not clad in mail and
leather with a throwing axe in each hand. But her short acquaintance with the
king at Deepwood Motte convinced her that he would have been no more fond of
her in a gown. Even with Galbart Glover’s wife, the pious Lady Sybelle, he had
been correct and courteous but plainly uncomfortable. This southron king seemed
to be one of those men to whom women are another race, as strange and
unfathomable as giants and grumkins and the children of the forest. The
She-Bear made him grind his teeth as well.
    There was only one woman that Stannis listened to, and he
had left her on the Wall. “Though I would sooner she was with us,” confessed Ser
Justin Massey, the fair-haired knight who commanded the baggage train. “The
last time we went into battle without Lady Melisandre was the Blackwater, when
Lord Renly’s shade came down upon us and drove half our host into the bay.”
    “The last time?” Asha said. “Was this sorceress at Deepwood
Motte? I did not see her.”
    “Hardly a battle,” Ser Justin said, smiling. “Your ironmen
fought bravely, my lady, but we had many times your numbers, and we took you
unawares. Winterfell will know that we are coming. And Roose Bolton has as many
men as we do.”
    Or more
, thought Asha.
    Even prisoners have ears, and she had heard all the talk at
Deepwood Motte, when King Stannis and his captains were debating this march.
Ser Justin had opposed it from the start, along with many of the knights and
lords who had come with Stannis from the south. But the wolves insisted; Roose
Bolton could not be suffered to hold Winterfell, and the Ned’s girl must be
rescued from the clutches of his bastard. So said Morgan Liddle, Brandon Norrey,
Big Bucket Wull, the Flints, even the She-Bear. “One hundred leagues from
Deepwood Motte to Winterfell,” said Artos Flint, the night the argument boiled
to a head in Galbart Glover’s longhall. “Three hundred miles as the raven
flies.”
    “A long