A Feast for Dragons

plowing through snowdrifts as high as her thighs.
“Justin?”
she called. There was no answer. Somewhere to her left she heard a horse
whicker.
The poor thing sounds frightened. Perhaps he knows that he’s to
be tomorrow’s supper
. Asha pulled her cloak about her tightly.
    She blundered back onto the village green unknowing. The
pinewood stakes still stood, charred and scorched but not burned through. The
chains about the dead had cooled by now, she saw, but still held the corpses
fast in their iron embrace. A raven was perched atop one, pulling at the
tatters of burned flesh that clung to its blackened skull. The blowing snow had
covered the ashes at the base of the pyre and crept up the dead man’s leg as
far as his ankle.
The old gods mean to bury him
, Asha thought.
This
was no work of theirs
.
    “Take a good long gander, cunt,” the deep voice of Clayton
Suggs said, behind her. “You’ll look just as pretty once you’re roasted. Tell
me, can squids scream?”
    God of my fathers, if you can hear me in your watery
halls beneath the waves, grant me just one small throwing axe
. The
Drowned God did not answer. He seldom did. That was the trouble with gods.
“Have you seen Ser Justin?”
    “That prancing fool? What do you want with him, cunt? If
it’s a fuck you need, I’m more a man than Massey.”
    Cunt again?
It was odd how men like Suggs
used that word to demean women when it was the only part of a woman they
valued. And Suggs was worse than Middle Liddle.
When he says the word,
he means it
. “Your king gelds men for rape,” she reminded him.
    Ser Clayton chuckled. “The king’s half-blind from staring
into fires. But have no fear, cunt, I’ll not rape you. I’d need to kill you
after, and I’d sooner see you burn.”
    There’s that horse again
. “Do you hear
that?”
    “Hear what?”
    “A horse. No, horses. More than one.” She turned her head,
listening. The snow did queer things to sound. It was hard to know which
direction it had come from.
    “Is this some squid game? I don’t hear—” Suggs scowled.
“Bloody hell. Riders.” He fumbled at his sword belt, his hands clumsy in their
fur-and-leather gloves, and finally succeeded in ripping his longsword from its
scabbard.
    By then the riders were upon them.
    They emerged from the storm like a troop of wraiths, big men
on small horses, made even bigger by the bulky furs they wore. Swords rode on
their hips, singing their soft steel song as they rattled in their scabbards.
Asha saw a battle-axe strapped to one man’s saddle, a warhammer on another’s
back. Shields they bore as well, but so obscured by snow and ice that the arms
upon them could not be read. For all her layers of wool and fur and boiled
leather, Asha felt naked standing there.
A horn
, she thought,
I
need a horn to rouse the camp
.
    “Run, you stupid cunt,” Ser Clayton shouted. “Run warn the
king. Lord Bolton is upon us.” A brute he might have been, but Suggs did not
want for courage. Sword in hand, he strode through the snow, putting himself
between the riders and the king’s tower, its beacon glimmering behind him like
the orange eye of some strange god. “Who goes there? Halt!
Halt!”
    The lead rider reined up before him. Behind were others,
perhaps as many as a score. Asha had no time to count them. Hundreds more might
be out there in the storm, coming hard upon their heels. Roose Bolton’s entire
host might be descending on them, hidden by darkness and swirling snow. These,
though …
    They are too many to be scouts and too few to make a
vanguard
. And two were all in black.
Night’s Watch
,
she realized suddenly. “Who are you?” she called.
    “Friends,” a half-familiar voice replied. “We looked for you
at Winterfell, but found only Crowfood Umber beating drums and blowing horns.
It took some time to find you.” The rider vaulted from his saddle, pulled back
his hood, and bowed. So thick was his beard, and so crusted with ice, that for
a moment Asha did not know him. Then it came.
“Tris?”
she said.
    “My lady.” Tristifer Botley took a knee. “The Maid is here
as well. Roggon, Grimtongue, Fingers, Rook … six of us, all those fit
enough to ride. Cromm died of his wounds.”
    “What is this?” Ser Clayton Suggs demanded. “You’re one of
hers? How did you get loose of Deepwood’s dungeons?”
    Tris rose and brushed the snow from his knees. “Sybelle
Glover was offered a handsome ransom for our freedom and chose to accept