A Feast for Dragons

found him
dead … please … we was
hungry
 …” The
fires reached his balls. As the hair around his cock began to burn, his
pleading dissolved into one long wordless shriek.
    Asha Greyjoy could taste the bile in the back of her throat.
On the Iron Islands, she had seen priests of her own people slit the throats of
thralls and give their bodies to the sea to honor the Drowned God. Brutal as
that was, this was worse.
    Close your eyes
, she told herself.
Close
your ears. Turn away. You do not need to see this
. The queen’s men
were singing some paean of praise for red R’hllor, but she could not hear the
words above the shrieks. The heat of the flames beat against her face, but even
so she shivered. The air grew thick with smoke and the stink of burnt flesh,
and one of the bodies still twitched against the red-hot chains that bound him
to the stake.
    After a time the screaming stopped.
    Wordless, King Stannis walked away, back to the solitude of
his watchtower.
Back to his beacon fire
, Asha knew,
to
search the flames for answers
. Arnolf Karstark made to hobble after
him, but Ser Richard Horpe took him by the arm and turned him toward the
longhall. The watchers began to drift away, each to his own fire and whatever
meagre supper he might find.
    Clayton Suggs sidled up beside her. “Did the iron cunt enjoy
the show?” His breath stank of ale and onions.
He has pig eyes
,
Asha thought. That was fitting; his shield and surcoat showed a pig with wings.
Suggs pressed his face so close to hers that she could count the blackheads on
his nose and said, “The crowd will be even bigger when it’s you squirming on a
stake.”
    He was not wrong. The wolves did not love her; she was
ironborn and must answer for the crimes of her people, for Moat Cailin and
Deepwood Motte and Torrhen’s Square, for centuries of reaving along the stony
shore, for all Theon did at Winterfell.
    “Unhand me, ser.” Every time Suggs spoke to her, it left her
yearning for her axes. Asha was as good a finger dancer as any man on the isles
and had ten fingers to prove it.
If only I could dance with this one
.
Some men had faces that cried out for a beard. Ser Clayton’s face cried out for
an axe between the eyes. But she was axeless here, so the best that she could
do was try to wrench away. That just made Ser Clayton grasp her all the
tighter, gloved fingers digging into her arm like iron claws.
    “My lady asked you to let her go,” said Aly Mormont. “You
would do well to listen, ser. Lady Asha is not for burning.”
    “She will be,” Suggs insisted. “We have harbored this demon
worshiper amongst us too long.” He released his grip on Asha’s arm all the
same. One did not provoke the She-Bear needlessly.
    That was the moment Justin Massey chose to appear. “The king
has other plans for his prize captive,” he said, with his easy smile. His
cheeks were red from the cold.
    “The king? Or you?” Suggs snorted his contempt. “Scheme all
you like, Massey. She’ll still be for the fire, her and her king’s blood.
There’s power in king’s blood, the red woman used to say. Power to please our
lord.”
    “Let R’hllor be content with the four we just sent him.”
    “Four baseborn churls. A beggar’s offering. Scum like that
will never stop the snow. She might.”
    The She-Bear spoke. “And if you burn her and the snows still
fall, what then? Who will you burn next? Me?”
    Asha could hold her tongue no longer. “Why not Ser Clayton?
Perhaps R’hllor would like one of his own. A faithful man who will sing his
praises as the flames lick at his cock.”
    Ser Justin laughed. Suggs was less amused. “Enjoy your
giggle, Massey. If the snow keeps falling, we will see who is laughing then.”
He glanced at the dead men on their stakes, smiled, and went off to join Ser
Godry and the other queen’s men.
    “My champion,” Asha said to Justin Massey. He deserved that
much, whatever his motives. “Thank you for the rescue, ser.”
    “It will not win you friends amongst the queen’s men,” said
the She-Bear. “Have you lost your faith in red R’hllor?”
    “I have lost faith in more than that,” Massey said, his
breath a pale mist in the air, “but I still believe in supper. Will you join
me, my ladies?”
    Aly Mormont shook her head. “I have no appetite.”
    “Nor I. But you had best choke down some horsemeat all the
same, or you may soon wish you had. We had eight hundred horses when we marched
from Deepwood Motte.