A Feast for Dragons

with
the Young Wolf.”
    “House Ryswell too,” said Roger Ryswell.
    “Even Dustins out of Barrowton.” Lady Dustin parted her lips
in a thin, feral smile. “The north remembers, Frey.”
    Aenys Frey’s mouth quivered with outrage. “Stark dishonored
us. That is what you northmen had best remember.”
    Roose Bolton rubbed at his chapped lips. “This squabbling
will not serve.” He flicked his fingers at Theon. “You are free to go. Take
care where you wander. Else it might be you we find upon the morrow, smiling a
red smile.”
    “As you say, m’lord.” Theon drew his gloves on over his
maimed hands and took his leave, limping on his maimed foot.
    The hour of the wolf found him still awake, wrapped in
layers of heavy wool and greasy fur, walking yet another circuit of the inner
walls, hoping to exhaust himself enough to sleep. His legs were caked with snow
to the knee, his head and shoulders shrouded in white. On this stretch of the
wall the wind was in his face, and melting snow ran down his cheeks like icy
tears.
    Then he heard the horn.
    A long low moan, it seemed to hang above the battlements,
lingering in the black air, soaking deep into the bones of every man who heard
it. All along the castle walls, sentries turned toward the sound, their hands
tightening around the shafts of their spears. In the ruined halls and keeps of
Winterfell, lords hushed other lords, horses nickered, and sleepers stirred in
their dark corners. No sooner had the sound of the warhorn died away than a
drum began to beat:
BOOM doom BOOM doom BOOM doom
. And a name
passed from the lips of each man to the next, written in small white puffs of
breath.
Stannis
, they whispered,
Stannis is here,
Stannis is come, Stannis, Stannis, Stannis
.
    Theon shivered. Baratheon or Bolton, it made no matter to
him. Stannis had made common cause with Jon Snow at the Wall, and Jon would
take his head off in a heartbeat.
Plucked from the clutches of one
bastard to die at the hands of another, what a jape
. Theon would have
laughed aloud if he’d remembered how.
    The drumming seemed to be coming from the wolfswood beyond
the Hunter’s Gate.
They are just outside the walls
. Theon made
his way along the wallwalk, one more man amongst a score doing the same. But
even when they reached the towers that flanked the gate itself, there was
nothing to be seen beyond the veil of white.
    “Do they mean to try and
blow
our walls
down?” japed a Flint when the warhorn sounded once again. “Mayhaps he thinks
he’s found the Horn of Joramun.”
    “Is Stannis fool enough to storm the castle?” a sentry
asked.
    “He’s not Robert,” declared a Barrowton man. “He’ll sit, see
if he don’t. Try and starve us out.”
    “He’ll freeze his balls off first,” another sentry said.
    “We should take the fight to him,” declared a Frey.
    Do that
, Theon thought.
Ride out into
the snow and die. Leave Winterfell to me and the ghosts
. Roose Bolton
would welcome such a fight, he sensed.
He needs an end to this
.
The castle was too crowded to withstand a long siege, and too many of the lords
here were of uncertain loyalty. Fat Wyman Manderly, Whoresbane Umber, the men
of House Hornwood and House Tallhart, the Lockes and Flints and Ryswells, all
of them were
northmen
, sworn to House Stark for generations
beyond count. It was the girl who held them here, Lord Eddard’s blood, but the
girl was just a mummer’s ploy, a lamb in a direwolf’s skin. So why not send the
northmen forth to battle Stannis before the farce unraveled?
Slaughter
in the snow. And every man who falls is one less foe for the Dreadfort
.
    Theon wondered if he might be allowed to fight. Then at
least he might die a man’s death, sword in hand. That was a gift Ramsay would
never give him, but Lord Roose might.
If I beg him. I did all he asked
of me, I played my part, I gave the girl away
.
    Death was the sweetest deliverance he could hope for.
    In the godswood the snow was still dissolving as it touched
the earth. Steam rose off the hot pools, fragrant with the smell of moss and
mud and decay. A warm fog hung in the air, turning the trees into sentinels,
tall soldiers shrouded in cloaks of gloom. During daylight hours, the steamy
wood was often full of northmen come to pray to the old gods, but at this hour
Theon Greyjoy found he had it all to himself.
    And in the heart of the wood the weirwood waited with its
knowing red eyes. Theon stopped by the edge of the pool and bowed his