A Feast for Dragons

Last night the count was sixty-four.”
    That did not shock her. Almost all of their big destriers
had failed, including Massey’s own. Most of their palfreys were gone as well.
Even the garrons of the northmen were faltering for want of fodder. But what
did they need horses for? Stannis was no longer marching anywhere. The sun and
moon and stars had been gone so long that Asha was starting to wonder whether
she had dreamed them. “I will eat.”
    Aly shook her head. “Not me.”
    “Let me look after Lady Asha, then,” Ser Justin told her.
“You have my word, I shall not permit her to escape.”
    The She-Bear gave her grudging assent, deaf to the japery in
his tone. They parted there, Aly to her tent, she and Justin Massey to the
longhall. It was not far, but the drifts were deep, the wind was gusty, and
Asha’s feet were blocks of ice. Her ankle stabbed at her with every step.
    Small and mean as it was, the longhall was the largest
building in the village, so the lords and captains had taken it for themselves,
whilst Stannis settled into the stone watchtower by the lakeshore. A pair of
guardsmen flanked its door, leaning on tall spears. One lifted the greased door
flap for Massey, and Ser Justin escorted Asha through to the blessed warmth
within.
    Benches and trestle tables ran along either side of the
hall, with room for fifty men … though twice that number had squeezed
themselves inside. A fire trench had been dug down the middle of the earthen
floor, with a row of smokeholes in the roof above. The wolves had taken to
sitting on one side of the trench, the knights and southron lords upon the
other.
    The southerners looked a sorry lot, Asha thought—gaunt and
hollow-cheeked, some pale and sick, others with red and wind-scoured faces. By
contrast the northmen seemed hale and healthy, big ruddy men with beards as
thick as bushes, clad in fur and iron. They might be cold and hungry too, but
the marching had gone easier for them, with their garrons and their bear-paws.
    Asha peeled off her fur mittens, wincing as she flexed her
fingers. Pain shot up her legs as her half-frozen feet began to thaw in the
warmth. The crofters had left behind a good supply of peat when they fled, so
the air was hazy with smoke and the rich, earthy smell of burning turf. She
hung her cloak on a peg inside the door after shaking off the snow that clung
to it.
    Ser Justin found them places on the bench and fetched supper
for the both of them—ale and chunks of horsemeat, charred black outside and red
within. Asha took a sip of ale and fell upon the horse flesh. The portion was
smaller than the last she’d tasted, but her belly still rumbled at the smell of
it. “My thanks, ser,” she said, as blood and grease ran down her chin.
    “Justin. I insist.” Massey cut his own meat into chunks and
stabbed one with his dagger.
    Down the table, Will Foxglove was telling the men around him
that Stannis would resume his march on Winterfell three days hence. He’d had it
from the lips of one of the grooms who tended the king’s horses. “His Grace has
seen victory in his fires,” Foxglove said, “a victory that will be sung of for
a thousand years in lord’s castle and peasant’s hut alike.”
    Justin Massey looked up from his horsemeat. “The cold count
last night reached eighty.” He pulled a piece of gristle from his teeth and
flicked it to the nearest dog. “If we march, we will die by the hundreds.”
    “We will die by the thousands if we stay here,” said Ser
Humfrey Clifton. “Press on or die, I say.”
    “Press on
and
die, I answer. And if we reach
Winterfell, what then? How do we take it? Half our men are so weak they can
scarce put one foot before another. Will you set them to scaling walls?
Building siege towers?”
    “We should remain here until the weather breaks,” said Ser
Ormund Wylde, a cadaverous old knight whose nature gave the lie to his name.
Asha had heard rumors that some of the men-at-arms were wagering on which of
the great knights and lords would be the next to die. Ser Ormund had emerged as
a clear favorite.
And how much coin was placed on me, I wonder?
Asha thought.
Perhaps there is still time to put down a wager
.
“Here at least we have some shelter,” Wylde was insisting, “and there are fish
in the lakes.”
    “Too few fish and too many fishermen,” Lord Peasebury said
gloomily. He had good reason for gloom; it was his men Ser Godry had just
burned, and there were some in this very