A Feast for Dragons

march,” a knight named Corliss Penny said.
    “Not so long as that,” insisted Ser Godry, the big knight
the others called the Giantslayer. “We have come as far already. The Lord of
Light will blaze a path for us.”
    “And when we arrive before Winterfell?” said Justin Massey.
“Two walls with a moat between them, and the inner wall a hundred feet high.
Bolton will never march out to face us in the field, and we do not have the
provisions to mount a siege.”
    “Arnolf Karstark will join his strength to ours, never
forget,” said Harwood Fell. “Mors Umber as well. We will have as many northmen
as Lord Bolton. And the woods are thick north of the castle. We will raise
siege towers, build rams …”
    And die by the thousands
, Asha thought.
    “We might do best to winter here,” suggested Lord Peasebury.
    “
Winter
here?” Big Bucket roared. “How much
food and fodder do you think Galbart Glover has laid by?”
    Then Ser Richard Horpe, the knight with the ravaged face and
the death’s-head moths on his surcoat, turned to Stannis and said, “Your Grace,
your brother—”
    The king cut him off. “We all know what my brother would do.
Robert would gallop up to the gates of Winterfell alone, break them with his
warhammer, and ride through the rubble to slay Roose Bolton with his left hand
and the Bastard with his right.” Stannis rose to his feet. “I am not Robert.
But we will march, and we will free Winterfell … or die in the
attempt.”
    Whatever doubts his lords might nurse, the common men seemed
to have faith in their king. Stannis had smashed Mance Rayder’s wildlings at
the Wall and cleaned Asha and her ironborn out of Deepwood Motte; he was
Robert’s brother, victor in a famous sea battle off Fair Isle, the man who had
held Storm’s End all through Robert’s Rebellion. And he bore a hero’s sword,
the enchanted blade Lightbringer, whose glow lit up the night.
    “Our foes are not as formidable as they appear,” Ser Justin
assured Asha on the first day of the march. “Roose Bolton is feared, but little
loved. And his friends the Freys … the north has not forgotten the
Red Wedding. Every lord at Winterfell lost kinsmen there. Stannis need only
bloody Bolton, and the northmen will abandon him.”
    So you hope
, thought Asha,
but first
the king must bloody him. Only a fool deserts the winning side
.
    Ser Justin called upon her cart half a dozen times that
first day, to bring her food and drink and tidings of the march. A man of easy
smiles and endless japes, large and well fleshed, with pink cheeks, blue eyes,
and a wind-tossed tangle of white-blond hair as pale as flax, he was a considerate
gaoler, ever solicitous of his captive’s comfort.
    “He wants you,” said the She-Bear, after his third visit.
    Her proper name was Alysane of House Mormont, but she wore
the other name as easily as she wore her mail. Short, chunky, muscular, the
heir to Bear Island had big thighs, big breasts, and big hands ridged with
callus. Even in sleep she wore ringmail under her furs, boiled leather under
that, and an old sheepskin under the leather, turned inside out for warmth. All
those layers made her look almost as wide as she was tall.
And ferocious
.
Sometimes it was hard for Asha Greyjoy to remember that she and the She-Bear
were almost of an age.
    “He wants my lands,” Asha replied. “He wants the Iron
Islands.” She knew the signs. She had seen the same before in other suitors.
Massey’s own ancestral holdings, far to the south, were lost to him, so he must
needs make an advantageous marriage or resign himself to being no more than a
knight of the king’s household. Stannis had frustrated Ser Justin’s hopes of marrying
the wildling princess that Asha had heard so much of, so now he had set his
sights on her. No doubt he dreamed of putting her in the Seastone Chair on Pyke
and ruling through her, as her lord and master. That would require ridding her
of her present lord and master, to be sure … not to mention the uncle
who had married her to him.
Not likely
, Asha judged.
The
Crow’s Eye could eat Ser Justin to break his fast and never even belch
.
    It made no matter. Her father’s lands would never be hers,
no matter whom she married. The ironborn were not a forgiving people, and Asha
had been defeated twice. Once at the kingsmoot by her uncle Euron, and again at
Deepwood Motte by Stannis. More than enough to stamp her as unfit to rule.
Wedding Justin Massey, or any of