A Feast for Dragons

ice. The northmen know how it’s done.”
    Even in his bulky fur cloak and heavy armor, Stannis looked
like a man with one foot in the grave. What little flesh he’d carried on his
tall, spare frame at Deepwood Motte had melted away during the march. The shape
of his skull could be seen under his skin, and his jaw was clenched so hard
Asha feared his teeth might shatter. “Fish, then,” he said, biting off each
word with a snap. “But we march at first light.”
    Yet when light came, the camp woke to snow and silence. The
sky turned from black to white, and seemed no brighter. Asha Greyjoy awoke
cramped and cold beneath the pile of sleeping furs, listening to the She-Bear’s
snores. She had never known a woman to snore so loudly, but she had grown used
to it whilst on the march, and even took some comfort in it now. It was the
silence that troubled her. No trumpets blew to rouse the men to mount up, form
column, prepare to march. No warhorns summoned forth the northmen.
Something
is wrong
.
    Asha crawled out from under her sleeping furs and pushed her
way out of the tent, knocking aside the wall of snow that had sealed them in
during the night. Her irons
clanked
as she climbed to her feet
and took a breath of the icy morning air. The snow was still falling, even more
heavily than when she’d crawled inside the tent. The lakes had vanished, and
the woods as well. She could see the shapes of other tents and lean-tos and the
fuzzy orange glow of the beacon fire burning atop the watchtower, but not the
tower itself. The storm had swallowed the rest.
    Somewhere ahead Roose Bolton awaited them behind the walls
of Winterfell, but Stannis Baratheon’s host sat snowbound and unmoving, walled
in by ice and snow, starving.
    ----

    DAENERYS
    The candle was almost gone. Less than an inch remained,
jutting from a pool of warm melted wax to cast its light over the queen’s bed.
The flame had begun to gutter.
    It will go out before much longer
, Dany
realized,
and when it does another night will be at its end
.
    Dawn always came too soon.
    She had not slept, could not sleep, would not sleep. She had
not even dared to close her eyes, for fear it would be morning when she opened
them again. If only she had the power, she would have made their nights go on
forever, but the best that she could do was stay awake to try and savor every
last sweet moment before daybreak turned them into no more than fading
memories.
    Beside her, Daario Naharis was sleeping as peacefully as a
newborn babe. He had a gift for sleeping, he’d boasted, smiling in that
cocksure way of his. In the field, he would sleep in the saddle oft as not, he
claimed, so as to be well rested should he come upon a battle. Sun or storm, it
made no matter. “A warrior who cannot sleep soon has no strength to fight,” he
said. He was never vexed by nightmares either. When Dany told him how Serwyn of
the Mirror Shield was haunted by the ghosts of all the knights he’d killed,
Daario only laughed. “If the ones I killed come bother me, I will kill them all
again.”
He has a sellsword’s conscience
, she realized then.
That
is to say, none at all
.
    Daario lay upon his stomach, the light linen coverlets
tangled about his long legs, his face half-buried in the pillows.
    Dany ran her hand down his back, tracing the line of his
spine. His skin was smooth beneath her touch, almost hairless.
His skin
is silk and satin
. She loved the feel of him beneath her fingers. She
loved to run her fingers through his hair, to knead the ache from his calves
after a long day in the saddle, to cup his cock and feel it harden against her
palm.
    If she had been some ordinary woman, she would gladly have
spent her whole life touching Daario, tracing his scars and making him tell her
how he’d come by every one.
I would give up my crown if he asked it of
me
, Dany thought … but he had not asked it, and never would.
Daario might whisper words of love when the two of them were as one, but she
knew it was the dragon queen he loved.
If I gave up my crown, he would
not want me
. Besides, kings who lost their crowns oft lost their heads
as well, and she could see no reason why it would be any different for a queen.
    The candle flickered one last time and died, drowned in its
own wax. Darkness swallowed the feather bed and its two occupants, and filled
every corner of the chamber. Dany wrapped her arms around her captain and
pressed herself against his back. She drank in the scent of him,