A Feast for Dragons

“and
Lady Alys believes Karhold will open its gates to her. Two of your men have
already sworn her their service and confirmed all she had to say concerning the
plans your father made with Ramsay Snow. You have close kin at Karhold, I am
told. A word from you could save their lives. Yield the castle. Lady Alys will
pardon the women who betrayed her and allow the men to take the black.”
    Cregan shook his head. Chunks of ice had formed about the
tangles in his hair, and
click
ed together softly when he moved.
“Never,” he said. “Never, never, never.”
    I should make his head a wedding gift for Lady Alys
and her Magnar
, Jon thought, but dare not take the risk. The Night’s
Watch took no part in the quarrels of the realm; some would say he had already
given Stannis too much help.
Behead this fool, and they will claim I am
killing northmen to give their lands to wildlings. Release him, and he will do
his best to rip apart all I’ve done with Lady Alys and the Magnar
. Jon
wondered what his father would do, how his uncle might deal with this. But
Eddard Stark was dead, Benjen Stark lost in the frozen wilds beyond the Wall.
You
know nothing, Jon Snow
.
    “Never is a long time,” Jon said. “You may feel differently
on the morrow, or a year from now. Soon or late King Stannis will return to the
Wall, however. When he does he will have you put to death … unless it
happens that you are wearing a black cloak. When a man takes the black, his
crimes are wiped away.”
Even such a man as you
. “Now pray
excuse me. I have a feast to attend.”
    After the biting cold of the ice cells, the crowded cellar
was so hot that Jon felt suffocated from the moment he came down the steps. The
air smelled of smoke and roasting meat and mulled wine. Axell Florent was
making a toast as Jon took his place upon the dais. “To King Stannis and his
wife, Queen Selyse, Light of the North!” Ser Axell bellowed. “To R’hllor, the
Lord of Light, may he defend us all! One land, one god, one king!”
    “One
land, one god, one king!”
the queen’s
men echoed.
    Jon drank with the rest. Whether Alys Karstark would find
any joy in her marriage he could not say, but this one night at least should be
one of celebration.
    The stewards began to bring out the first dish, an onion
broth flavored with bits of goat and carrot. Not precisely royal fare, but
nourishing; it tasted good enough and warmed the belly. Owen the Oaf took up
his fiddle, and several of the free folk joined in with pipes and drums.
The
same pipes and drums they played to sound Mance Rayder’s attack upon the Wall
.
Jon thought they sounded sweeter now. With the broth came loaves of coarse
brown bread, warm from the oven. Salt and butter sat upon the tables. The sight
made Jon gloomy. They were well provided with salt, Bowen Marsh had told him,
but the last of the butter would be gone within a moon’s turn.
    Old Flint and The Norrey had been given places of high honor
just below the dais. Both men had been too old to march with Stannis; they had
sent their sons and grandsons in their stead. But they had been quick enough to
descend on Castle Black for the wedding. Each had brought a wet nurse to the
Wall as well. The Norrey woman was forty, with the biggest breasts Jon Snow had
ever seen. The Flint girl was fourteen and flat-chested as a boy, though she did
not lack for milk. Between the two of them, the child Val called Monster seemed
to be thriving.
    For that much Jon was grateful … but he did not
believe for a moment that two such hoary old warriors would have hied down from
their hills for that alone. Each had brought a tail of fighting men—five for
Old Flint, twelve for The Norrey, all clad in ragged skins and studded
leathers, fearsome as the face of winter. Some had long beards, some had scars,
some had both; all worshiped the old gods of the north, those same gods
worshiped by the free folk beyond the Wall. Yet here they sat, drinking to a
marriage hallowed by some queer red god from beyond the seas.
    Better that than refuse to drink
. Neither
Flint nor Norrey had turned their cups over to spill their wine upon the floor.
That might betoken a certain acceptance.
Or perhaps they just hate to
waste good southron wine. They will not have tasted much of it up in those
stony hills of theirs
.
    Between courses, Ser Axell Florent led Queen Selyse out onto
the floor to dance. Others followed—the queen’s knights first, partnered with
her ladies. Ser Brus