A Feast for Dragons

that had buried
him during the night.
    If Ramsay’s bitches had not dug him up, he might have stayed
buried till spring. By the time Ben Bones pulled them off, Grey Jeyne had eaten
so much of the dead man’s face that half the day was gone before they knew for
certain who he’d been: a man-at-arms of four-and-forty years who had marched
north with Roger Ryswell. “A drunk,” Ryswell declared. “Pissing off the wall,
I’ll wager. He slipped and fell.” No one disagreed. But Theon Greyjoy found
himself wondering why any man would climb the snow-slick steps to the
battlements in the black of night just to take a piss.
    As the garrison broke its fast that morning on stale bread
fried in bacon grease (the lords and knights ate the bacon), the talk along the
benches was of little but the corpse.
    “Stannis has friends inside the castle,” Theon heard one
serjeant mutter. He was an old Tallhart man, three trees sewn on his ragged
surcoat. The watch had just changed. Men were coming in from the cold, stomping
their feet to knock the snow off their boots and breeches as the midday meal
was served—blood sausage, leeks, and brown bread still warm from the ovens.
    “Stannis?” laughed one of Roose Ryswell’s riders. “Stannis
is snowed to death by now. Else he’s run back to the Wall with his tail froze
between his legs.”
    “He could be camped five feet from our walls with a hundred
thousand men,” said an archer wearing Cerwyn colors. “We’d never see a one o’
them through this storm.”
    Endless, ceaseless, merciless, the snow had fallen day and
night. Drifts climbed the walls and filled the crenels along the battlements,
white blankets covered every roof, tents sagged beneath the weight. Ropes were
strung from hall to hall to help men keep from getting lost as they crossed the
yards. Sentries crowded into the guard turrets to warm half-frozen hands over
glowing braziers, leaving the wallwalks to the snowy sentinels the squires had
thrown up, who grew larger and stranger every night as wind and weather worked
their will upon them. Ragged beards of ice grew down the spears clasped in
their snowy fists. No less a man than Hosteen Frey, who had been heard growling
that he did not fear a little snow, lost an ear to frostbite.
    The horses in the yards suffered most. The blankets thrown
over them to keep them warm soaked through and froze if not changed regularly. When
fires were lit to keep the cold at bay, they did more harm then good. The
warhorses feared the flames and fought to get away, injuring themselves and
other horses as they twisted at their lines. Only the horses in the stables
were safe and warm, but the stables were already overcrowded.
    “The gods have turned against us,” old Lord Locke was heard
to say in the Great Hall. “This is their wroth. A wind as cold as hell itself
and snows that never end. We are cursed.”
    “
Stannis
is cursed,” a Dreadfort man insisted.
“He is the one out there in the storm.”
    “Lord Stannis might be warmer than we know,” one foolish
freerider argued. “His sorceress can summon fire. Might be her red god can melt
these snows.”
    That was unwise
, Theon knew at once. The man
spoke too loudly, and in the hearing of Yellow Dick and Sour Alyn and Ben
Bones. When the tale reached Lord Ramsay, he sent his Bastard’s Boys to seize
the man and drag him out into the snow. “As you seem so fond of Stannis, we
will send you to him,” he said. Damon Dance-for-Me gave the freerider a few
lashes with his long greased whip. Then, whilst Skinner and Yellow Dick made
wagers on how fast his blood would freeze, Ramsay had the man dragged up to the
Battlements Gate.
    Winterfell’s great main gates were closed and barred, and so
choked with ice and snow that the portcullis would need to be chipped free
before it could be raised. Much the same was true of the Hunter’s Gate, though
there at least ice was not a problem, since the gate had seen recent use. The
Kingsroad Gate had not, and ice had frozen those drawbridge chains rock hard.
Which left the Battlements Gate, a small arched postern in the inner wall. Only
half a gate, in truth, it had a drawbridge that spanned the frozen moat but no
corresponding gateway through the outer wall, offering access to the outer
ramparts but not the world beyond.
    The bleeding freerider was carried across the bridge and up
the steps, still protesting. Then Skinner and Sour Alyn seized his arms and
legs and tossed him from the