A Feast for Dragons

a wolf’s head when seen from a certain angle,
a half-frozen waterfall, a natural stone arch bearded with grey-green moss.
Asha knew them all. She had come this way before, riding to Winterfell to
persuade her brother Theon to abandon his conquest and return with her to the
safety of Deepwood Motte.
I failed in that as well
.
    That day they made fourteen miles, and were glad of it.
    When dusk fell, the driver pulled the wayn off under the
tree. As he was loosing the horses from the traces, Ser Justin trotted up and
undid the fetters around Asha’s ankles. He and the She-Bear escorted her
through the camp to the king’s tent. A captive she might be, but she was still
a Greyjoy of Pyke, and it pleased Stannis Baratheon to feed her scraps from his
own table, where he supped with his captains and commanders.
    The king’s pavilion was near as large as the longhall back
at Deepwood Motte, but there was little grand about it beyond its size. Its
stiff walls of heavy yellow canvas were badly faded, stained by mud and water,
with spots of mildew showing. Atop its center pole flew the royal standard,
golden, with a stag’s head within a burning heart. On three sides the pavilions
of the southron lordlings who had come north with Stannis surrounded it. On the
fourth side the nightfire roared, lashing at the darkening sky with swirls of
flame.
    A dozen men were splitting logs to feed the blaze when Asha
came limping up with her keepers.
Queen’s men
. Their god was
Red R’hllor, and a jealous god he was. Her own god, the Drowned God of the Iron
Isles, was a demon to their eyes, and if she did not embrace this Lord of
Light, she would be damned and doomed.
They would as gladly burn me as
those logs and broken branches
. Some had urged that very thing within
her hearing after the battle in the woods. Stannis had refused.
    The king stood outside his tent, staring into the nightfire.
What does he see there? Victory? Doom? The face of his red and hungry
god?
His eyes were sunk in deep pits, his close-cropped beard no more
than a shadow across his hollow cheeks and bony jawbone. Yet there was power in
his stare, an iron ferocity that told Asha this man would never, ever turn back
from his course.
    She went to one knee before him. “Sire.”
Am I humbled
enough for you, Your Grace? Am I beaten, bowed, and broken sufficiently for
your liking?
“Strike these chains from my wrists, I beg you. Let me
ride. I will attempt no escape.”
    Stannis looked at her as he might look at a dog who presumed
to hump against his leg. “You earned those irons.”
    “I did. Now I offer you my men, my ships, my wits.”
    “Your ships are mine, or burnt. Your men … how
many are left? Ten? Twelve?”
    Nine. Six, if you count only those strong enough to
fight
. “Dagmer Cleftjaw holds Torrhen’s Square. A fierce fighter, and
a leal servant of House Greyjoy. I can deliver that castle to you, and its
garrison as well.”
Perhaps
, she might have added, but it would
not serve her cause to show doubt before this king.
    “Torrhen’s Square is not worth the mud beneath my heels. It
is Winterfell that matters.”
    “Strike off these irons and let me help you take it, Sire.
Your Grace’s royal brother was renowned for turning fallen foes into friends.
Make me your man.”
    “The gods did not make you a man. How can I?” Stannis turned
back to the nightfire and whatever he saw dancing there amongst the orange
flames.
    Ser Justin Massey grasped Asha by the arm and pulled her
inside the royal tent. “That was ill judged, my lady,” he told her. “Never
speak to him of Robert.”
    I should have known better
. Asha knew how it
went with little brothers. She remembered Theon as a boy, a shy child who lived
in awe, and fear, of Rodrik and Maron.
They never grow out of it
,
she decided.
A little brother may live to be a hundred, but he will
always be a little brother
. She rattled her iron jewelry and imagined
how pleasant it would be to step up behind Stannis and throttle him with the
chain that bound her wrists.
    They supped that night on a venison stew made from a scrawny
hart that a scout called Benjicot Branch had brought down. But only in the
royal tent. Beyond those canvas walls, each man got a heel of bread and a chunk
of black sausage no longer than a finger, washed down with the last of Galbart
Glover’s ale.
    One hundred leagues from Deepwood Motte to Winterfell. Three
hundred miles as the raven flies. “Would that we were ravens,”