A Feast for Dragons

Stannis Baratheon’s lordlings, would hurt more
than it helped.
The kraken’s daughter turned out to be just a woman
after all
, the captains and the kings would say.
See how she
spreads her legs for this soft green land lord
.
    Still, if Ser Justin wished to court her favor with food and
wine and words, Asha was not like to discourage him. He made for better company
than the taciturn She-Bear, and she was elsewise alone amongst five thousand
foes. Tris Botley, Qarl the Maid, Cromm, Roggon, and the rest of her bloodied
band had been left behind at Deepwood Motte, in Galbart Glover’s dungeons.
    The army covered twenty-two miles the first day, by the
reckoning of the guides Lady Sybelle had given them, trackers and hunters sworn
to Deepwood with clan names like Forrester and Woods, Branch and Bole. The
second day the host made twenty-four, as their vanguard passed beyond the
Glover lands into the thick of the wolfswood.
“R’hllor, send your light
to lead us through this gloom,”
the faithful prayed that night as they
gathered about a roaring blaze outside the king’s pavilion. Southron knights
and men-at-arms, the lot of them. Asha would have called them king’s men, but
the other stormlanders and crownlands men named them queen’s
men … though the queen they followed was the red one at Castle Black,
not the wife that Stannis Baratheon had left behind at Eastwatch-by-the-Sea.
“Oh,
Lord of Light, we beseech you, cast your fiery eye upon us and keep
us safe and warm,”
they sang to the flames, “for
the night is
dark and full of terrors.”
    A big knight named Ser Godry Farring led them.
Godry
the Giantslayer. A big name for a small man
. Farring was broad-chested
and well muscled under his plate and mail. He was also arrogant and vain, it
seemed to Asha, hungry for glory, deaf to caution, a glutton for praise, and
contemptuous of smallfolk, wolves, and women. In the last, he was not unlike
his king.
    “Let me have a horse,” Asha asked Ser Justin, when he rode
up to the wayn with half a ham. “I am going mad in these chains. I will not attempt
escape. You have my word on that.”
    “Would that I could, my lady. You are the king’s captive,
not mine own.”
    “Your king will not take a woman’s word.”
    The She-Bear growled. “Why should we trust the word of any
ironman after what your brother did at Winterfell?”
    “I am not Theon,” Asha insisted … but the chains
remained.
    As Ser Justin galloped down the column, she found herself
remembering the last time she had seen her mother. It had been on Harlaw, at
Ten Towers. A candle had been flickering in her mother’s chamber, but her great
carved bed was empty beneath its dusty canopy. Lady Alannys sat beside a
window, staring out across the sea. “Did you bring my baby boy?” she’d asked,
mouth trembling. “Theon could not come,” Asha had told her, looking down upon
the ruin of the woman who had given her birth, a mother who had lost two of her
sons. And the third …
    I send you each a piece of prince
.
    Whatever befell when battle was joined at Winterfell, Asha
Greyjoy did not think her brother likely to survive it.
Theon Turncloak.
Even the She-Bear wants his head on a spike
.
    “Do you have brothers?” Asha asked her keeper.
    “Sisters,” Alysane Mormont replied, gruff as ever. “Five, we
were. All girls. Lyanna is back on Bear Island. Lyra and Jory are with our
mother. Dacey was murdered.”
    “The Red Wedding.”
    “Aye.” Alysane stared at Asha for a moment. “I have a son.
He’s only two. My daughter’s nine.”
    “You started young.”
    “Too young. But better that than wait too late.”
    A stab at me
, Asha thought,
but let
it be
. “You are wed.”
    “No. My children were fathered by a bear.” Alysane smiled.
Her teeth were crooked, but there was something ingratiating about that smile.
“Mormont women are skinchangers. We turn into bears and find mates in the
woods. Everyone knows.”
    Asha smiled back. “Mormont women are all fighters too.”
    The other woman’s smile faded. “What we are is what you made
us. On Bear Island every child learns to fear krakens rising from the sea.”
    The Old Way
. Asha turned away, chains
clink
ing
faintly. On the third day the forest pressed close around them, and the rutted
roads dwindled down to game trails that soon proved to be too narrow for their
larger wagons. Here and there they wound their way past familiar landmarks: a
stony hill that looked a bit like