A Feast for Dragons

days’ ride from here, the kingsroad was said to be
impassable.
Melisandre knows that too
. And to the east, a
savage storm was raging on the Bay of Seals. At last report, the ragtag fleet
they had assembled to rescue the free folk from Hardhome still huddled at
Eastwatch-by-the-Sea, confined to port by the rough seas. “You are seeing
cinders dancing in the updraft.”
    “I am seeing skulls. And you. I see your face every time I
look into the flames. The danger that I warned you of grows very close now.”
    “Daggers in the dark. I know. You will forgive my doubts, my
lady.
A grey girl on a dying horse, fleeing from a marriage
,
that was what you said.”
    “I was not wrong.”
    “You were not right. Alys is not Arya.”
    “The vision was a true one. It was my reading that was
false. I am as mortal as you, Jon Snow. All mortals err.”
    “Even lord commanders.” Mance Rayder and his spearwives had
not returned, and Jon could not help but wonder whether the red woman had lied
of a purpose.
Is she playing her own game?
    “You would do well to keep your wolf beside you, my lord.”
    “Ghost is seldom far.” The direwolf raised his head at the
sound of his name. Jon scratched him behind the ears. “But now you must excuse
me. Ghost, with me.”
    Carved from the base of the Wall and closed with heavy
wooden doors, the ice cells ranged from small to smaller. Some were big enough
to allow a man to pace, others so small that prisoners were forced to sit; the
smallest were too cramped to allow even that.
    Jon had given his chief captive the largest cell, a pail to
shit in, enough furs to keep him from freezing, and a skin of wine. It took the
guards some time to open his cell, as ice had formed inside the lock. Rusted
hinges screamed like damned souls when Wick Whittlestick yanked the door wide
enough for Jon to slip through. A faint fecal odor greeted him, though less
overpowering than he’d expected. Even shit froze solid in such bitter cold. Jon
Snow could see his own reflection dimly inside the icy walls.
    In one corner of the cell a heap of furs was piled up almost
to the height of a man. “Karstark,” said Jon Snow. “Wake up.”
    The furs stirred. Some had frozen together, and the frost
that covered them glittered when they moved. An arm emerged, then a face—brown
hair, tangled and matted and streaked with grey, two fierce eyes, a nose, a
mouth, a beard. Ice caked the prisoner’s mustache, clumps of frozen snot.
“Snow.” His breath steamed in the air, fogging the ice behind his head. “You
have no right to hold me. The laws of hospitality—”
    “You are no guest of mine. You came to the Wall without my
leave, armed, to carry off your niece against her will. Lady Alys was given
bread and salt. She is a guest. You are a prisoner.” Jon let that hang for a
moment, then said, “Your niece is wed.”
    Cregan Karstark’s lips skinned back from his teeth. “Alys
was promised to me.” Though past fifty, he had been a strong man when he went
into the cell. The cold had robbed him of that strength and left him stiff and
weak. “My lord father—”
    “Your father is a castellan, not a lord. And a castellan has
no right to make marriage pacts.”
    “My father, Arnolf, is Lord of Karhold.”
    “A son comes before an uncle by all the laws I know.”
    Cregan pushed himself to his feet and kicked aside the furs
clinging to his ankles. “Harrion is dead.”
    Or will be soon
. “A daughter comes before an
uncle too. If her brother is dead, Karhold belongs to Lady Alys. And she has
given her hand in marriage to Sigorn, Magnar of Thenn.”
    “A wildling. A filthy, murdering wildling.” Cregan’s hands
closed into fists. The gloves that covered them were leather, lined with fur to
match the cloak that hung matted and stiff from his broad shoulders. His black
wool surcoat was emblazoned with the white sunburst of his house. “I see what
you are, Snow. Half a wolf and half a wildling, baseborn get of a traitor and a
whore. You would deliver a highborn maid to the bed of some stinking savage.
Did you sample her yourself first?” He laughed. “If you mean to kill me, do it
and be damned for a kinslayer. Stark and Karstark are one blood.”
    “My name is Snow.”
    “Bastard.”
    “Guilty. Of that, at least.”
    “Let this Magnar come to Karhold. We’ll hack off his head
and stuff it in a privy, so we can piss into his mouth.”
    “Sigorn leads two hundred Thenns,” Jon pointed out,